Analyzing Sean Hannity's Thinking

Yes, quite a scary title, but stick with me. Hannity is disturbed by President Obama's comments at a town hall event on Friday in Strasbourg, France. Obama called on Americans to stop ridiculing Europe as many have increasingly over the past eight years, while simultaneously calling out Europe's tendency to blame much of the world's woes on the United States. Thanks to Think Progress, here's the rundown of what was said:

That evening, Fox News’s Sean Hannity truncated Obama’s speech, cutting out Obama’s criticism of Europe’s anti-Americanism. Hannity was apoplectic that Obama would “blame America first,” declaring the president was just like the Dixie Chicks. What’s more, he insisted, the speech was proof of Obama’s “deep resentment” of America:

HANNITY: You know, I’m going to — I resent this. When you consider…all we have done just in the last century alone to save Europe from themselves. I resent this. I think it’s outrageous, the media’s ignored it. But don’t you think this is like the Dixie Chicks? […]

HANNITY: But didn’t we see all of this in the campaign? As I was bringing up — didn’t Reverend Wright give us a little insight into his thought process? Didn’t, you know, Michelle Obama, America is a downright mean country. … But I’m thinking, didn’t we get some insight? When you sit on a board and give speeches with Bill Ayers, didn’t this — Do you think he harbors deep resentment that he just hides? Because I believe he does.

As painful as it might be to watch that video (I can't stand Sean Hannity anymore than you can), I think we can get something out of this. Let's first explicate what Hannity said.

We can start with the word "resentment." Webster's Dictionary gives us the definition of "resent": "to feel or express annoyance or ill will at." So Sean Hannity believes that, at best, America annoys President Obama, and, at worst, Obama wishes the United States ill will. Hannity's rhetoric is obviously divisive here. By expressing his belief that the president wishes for America to fail, Hannity telegraphs to us that he believes himself to be in line with America's values. By accusing President Obama of not investing himself in the United States and its long-term health, Sean Hannity is implying that he knows what it takes to make that investment.

The questioning of Barack Obama's patriotism is certainly not shocking given the character assassination John Kerry had to endure from the right in 2004. The conservative machine, fueled by hacks like Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Hannity himself, is disinterested in honest discussions of the issues facing America today (there's not much to work with). Instead, they'd rather discredit the messenger and reap the political benefits, not enjoying widespread support from the American people, but dividing them enough to ensure electoral success, and thus, power. This didn't work for Hannity and Co. in 2008, and so someone's still throwing a hissy-fit in the playpen. But I digress.

I don't believe that simply attacking Hannity for having an opinion is the efficient thing to do here, though it's tempting. We can take Hannity's tirade above at face value and get pissed off, or we can examine what's really being said and represented between the lines. When you do that in this case, things get very interesting.

Like I explained before, in order to make the claim that Obama isn't supporting America enough, Hannity must believe that he has the recipe for the ideal American patriotism. Let's dig in his biography a bit to find out what we all should be doing in order to be the best Americans we can be.

Hannity hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time; Hannity has since called the show "terrible." Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year when management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians." This was after two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS by Gene Antonio; among other remarks, Hannity told a lesbian caller that "I feel sorry for your child". The station later reversed its decision to dismiss Hannity due in part to a campaign conducted by the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hannity decided against returning to KCSB.

After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America." Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville market) then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996 Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a television program under the working title Hannity and LTBD ("liberal to be determined"). Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes.

Later that year Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity has been on WABC's afternoon time slot since January 1998.

Hmm... anything else?

Conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel, in their book Common Ground, describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group."

Ah, right - you have to be divisive as well. To be fair, Mr. Hannity is part of one initiative for the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund:

Hannity has hosted country music-themed Freedom Concerts since 2003, billed to help benefit the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, a charity created by Oliver North to provide college scholarships to children with a parent severely disabled or killed in military action. Appearing artists have included Sara Evans, Martina McBride, Lee Greenwood, LeAnn Rimes, Montgomery Gentry, Darryl Worley, Charlie Daniels, Larry the Cable Guy, and Michael W. Smith.

The Freedom Concerts were held annually in the Northern Star Arena at the Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey through 2006. In 2007, the annual concert was expanded to a summer series held at five locations across the United States, culminating with the September 11 event in New Jersey marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Speakers at the September 11, 2007 concert included Oliver North, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and several conservative talk show hosts from WABC Radio.

This analysis demonstrates the values that Sean Hannity believes to be requisite in being a sincere American. Apparently, loudmouth, conservative bigotry is the name of the game. Yet, remember -- Hannity was criticizing our president. For shits and giggles, let's take a look at his formative years.

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He disclosed that he used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind". At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency in 2008, Obama identified his high-school drug use as his "greatest moral failure".

Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."

Following high school, he moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. After two years he transferred in 1981 to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations and graduated with a B.A. in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time. He returned in August 2006 in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.

Today's Republican Party sees its vision for America crystallized in Sean Hannity, who talks a lot, is divisive, and eventually came up with one idea that significantly helps some Americans. Meanwhile, Democrats have Barack Obama to symbolize their values, someone who is a product of multiculturalism, someone who learned tolerance from a young age, someone who turned down a likely six-figure job to improve the quality of life of others', and yes, someone who happened to experiment with drugs more than 25 years ago.

Sometimes we criticize the right-wing lunacy automatically, without analysis. And sometimes that is necessary. (We can't always be dismantling every assertion spewed from the conservative machine -- it'd take forever.) But sometimes thinking through these illogical rants is quite helpful because they illuminate precisely what we're fighting for. With the largest generation in America's history coming of age and espousing values identical to those found in President Obama's story, it's clear that it's Obama's brand of citizenship and view of America that is ascendant. Unfortunately for Mr. Hannity, Fox News, and the GOP, they're going to get lost in the shuffle until they recalibrate their idea of America.