Predict what excuse Sean Hannity will use to explain why he misused old video to back up his claim that a large crowd came to Washington to protest the health care bill. (One rule: his excuse must somehow blame the liberals).
Sean Hannity plans to blame liberals for his mis-use of video
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I'll defer to the almighty Colbert:
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias"
It will be the "blame the intern" trick. Only in this case, the intern will be an ACORN infiltrator.
"Because I never expected to get caught."
Because of Liberal Net Neutrality, it took over 2 months for this video to make it from Glen Beck's office to Sean Hannity's office. We were denied our Freedom to Boost the transmission of Important Information thus leading Fox News to believe that the video was current. This is exactly why we need to pass the Freedom of Information Act!
"I thought the leaves were still on the trees because of Al Gore's Global Warming."
-- MrJM
"All those people would have come if they could."
(Shades of Rush Limbaugh's "We stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway")
He was misled by The Google.
The "Hannity being an opinion person, not a news critter" excuse will be trotted out. I wish you were kidding about the liberals being blamed. I'm still not sure how Bush getting parental permission to go chickenhawk AWOL somehow went down in history as Dan Rather's fault.
"It was a subtle clue to our viewers, but since Jon Stewart caught it, the secret is out. From January 1st we're changing name to FOX Comedy. But no need to worry, the programs will stay the same."
A Muslim Acorn intern. Who is not available to testify, as an Out of Control Bloated Big Government Death Panel just taxed him to death.
Because he can't help it, being a douche and all...
To take a page from Dan Rather, he will simply state that he believes the videotapes haven't been proven false, and even if they are, the underlying story is still true.
or the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, rather
What's one more little drop of deceit in such a vast ocean?
IOKIYAR.
Maybe because the videos have an air of truthiness about them?
Wait, no liberal angle.
Maybe...
Because the socialist communist Nazi liberals want to take away his freedom to use those videos to "illustrate" his point!
I don't get it. Am I supposed to have *less* respect for Sean Hannity than I already do? Is Fox News supposed to look *less* legitimate that it already is? I just don't think either of those is possible.
Fox News doesn't do excuses. They don't need excuses. When reality becomes inconvenient they move on to the next line of bullshit. The audience will either not care, not remember, or blow off the inconsistency.
For them, it is not about Truth, it is about Truthiness.
They'd make great Outer Party members.
He'll accept that he used the video footage liberally and promise never to do another liberal thing again ever.
"The fight to keep health care from falling into the hands of the dangerously liberal poor is enough to justify our innocent use of stock footage. The rally looked exactly the same except for the leaves, anyway."
Change is a well known tenet of the liberal agenda. The fall leaves on the trees in the original video advocate a seasonal change that undermines the power of the Conservative message of institutional stasis. Therefore, Hannity was left with no option but to use footage of the older rally with green leaves on the trees, as God intended them, forever and ever amen.
"the god-given patriotic sentiment of the american people transcends time."
Ahem... is this thing on? OK... Here we go.
It's all well and good for Comedy Central funny-men like Jon Stewart to poke fun at the serious issues facing freedom in this country today. They don't have a responsibility to you, the viewer, to do anything but make you laugh. And they do a good job of that. I watch Jon myself. Funny guy.
But here's the thing... we take what we do very seriously. When we shine on light on what's going on in Washington, it's not to make you laugh. It's to make you think. When we show you Obama or Pellosi saying one thing one day and the opposite the next... that's because you need to know about how the people running this country don't care about the truth.
In the grand scheme of things, one story, one news show or even one network isn't that important. If we made a mistake... we apologize. Everybody makes mistakes. Except, I guess, comedians. What they do doesn't need to be held up to the light of day, to close scrutiny, because they exist just to tear down. Not to build up. Not to educate. Not to inform.
So you know what, Mr. Stewart? You got us. Fine. We care too much about our viewers. We try to (sic) hard. Sometimes, when you care so much... when you're concentrating on the big picture about what's happening to freedom in out country, and how real American's are having their future sold out from under them... sometimes you miss a little thing here and there.
You got your laugh. That's cool. But we'd rather be accused of taking freedom too seriously than taking nothing seriously.
My best guess, and lord, I hope I'm wrong...
"Yes, it's true that - upon further study - our numbers were a little bit bigger than they should have been. But our staff counted the people in those videos as best as we could, and I think we should honor their effort. After all, it's not their fault that they had no ability to count, or estimate crowd sizes. It's the fault of teachers, who taught them to count, and estimate. And we all know that teaching is one of the biggest liberal cabals in the world. Is it any wonder that our numbers were the tiniest bit off?
We all know that teachers are a pack of damned liberals, prone to over-inflate numbers just to make their case. I note that Obama was a teacher, as was that guy who was the president on the West Wing - a fine example of liberalism, that Martin Sheen. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan was an actor, and we all know that means he trafficked in belief - and look how much more powerful belief turned out to be, as a force of good and a force of change, than so-called book learnin'.
And so, I call on our loyal conservatives to begin the long process of taking back the academy, starting with the field of mathematics. I'll start the process by declaring that, from now on, one plus one equals three. Because I BELIEVE that 1 + 1 equals three, and if you believe it too, well, then now we're getting somewhere. Now, someone get me an old envelope and something to write with, and we'll get started on figuring out how many math and science teachers we need to begin the movement. My current estimate: about a gazillion. Give or take a few, that is."
Note, for the pedantic: Yes, my above proposed text for Hannity ignores the basic premise - that the VIDEO was wrong. But this is my actual response, to the actual question posed herein, nonetheless. For isn't the use of such distractive tactics - i.e. responding to a different question, and thus controlling the conversation -the way of the far right? If Hannity actually addresses the video use itself, I'll eat my hat.
"Liberals make me cry."
Oh, wait. Is that Beck? It's like all the pencils have the tips broken off.
an inadvertant mistake - http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911110053
andyhavens - Is your real name Sean Hannity, or are you just a Fox scriptwriter?
Because Chuck Norris said it was okay and meanwhile our troops are dying in Afghanistan! Trying to change the subject, are you?
Because our usual audience is well, lacking in critical thought skills so we could have shown a video of monkeys humping and it would have made no difference.
I was waiting in a doctor's waiting room waiting for an appointment (too much waiting...) being the youngest one there (at 53) and someone decides they want to watch TV. Hmm they said, wonder what channel Fox is on and announce "Does anyone mind if I watch Fox". And I chime in "Yes, I mind". And the old guy says, "Oh, You're one of those. Been to any Obama rallies recently. Bet you don't like O'Reily.". And the wife says, "My son is in the Army and Fox is the only station that tells me what is really happening".
Fortunately my liberal upbringing prevented me from punching out a 75 year old guy and I retreated into my iPhone entertainment device (tm).
@Andyhavens 23:
Well, Hannity did apologize. I'll give him that. It might mean more if mistakes like this didn't tend to favor the Fox line (cf. the scandal over *Democratic* Rep. Mark Foley).
Stewart and Colbert have careers because Fox are a propaganda outlet pretending to be a source of news and analysis and failing hilariously and repeatedly. Those latest San Francisco-area tremors are William Randolph Hearst spinning in his grave.
Debunking idiots and moral imbeciles is a valuable public service. Too bad only a comedy show feels up to the job.
He will insist he and/or Fox did no wrong, it was (if anything) an "honest mistake", and the libruls are just nit-picking.
Fox News has shown a pattern of this kind of misleading: whenever a Republican congressman is caught in a scandal they show his affiliation as Democrat on screen (how many of their loyal followers are fooled by this?) And Al Franken once pointed out that Hannity will revert to repeating misleading statistics just days after someone corrects him on air-- he clearly doesn't care about reality, but rather how he would prefer reality to be.
My Father's politics are a little Right of Republican (he was a Conservative Party member in NY for years because the Republicans were too Liberal), and even he doesn't like Fox News any more because the News side reports the opinions of the Opinion side as news. He also thinks O'Reilly's an Ass with an overblown opinion of himself, so we now have that in common.
Hannity knows the vast majority of his audience doesn't look outside Fox for any info so they won't know about it. Why apologize when his viewers will think it's just another "libural conspiracy" if they know of it at all?
Amazingly, Hannity apologized and gave Jon Stewart credit for catching him in what he called "an inadvertent mistake" (yeah. . . there does seem to be a pattern at Fox of these kinds of "mistakes"), however they guy is so smug that he closed by thanking the Daily Show writers for watching his show everyday.
Of course he didn't apologize for calling the crowd size "up to 45,000" when the Washington Post estimated it at around 10,000 (but hey-- they're the "liberal media" so you can't believe them, right?) Hey, maybe when you count all the cops and tourists and cars driving by and reporters covering the rally it was around 45,000.