I recently came upon an excellent montage that undeniably lays bare the scam-in-a-suit that is Sean Hannity.
The first half of the clip shows Hannity shilling at the top of his lungs on Fox News for the PATRIOT Act/NSA surveillance in the post-9/11 panic that included, among many other Orwellian provisions, wiretapping of U.S. citizens with no probable cause as required by the Constitution.
The second half shows Hannity turning on a dime once Obama is in office, suddenly developing a deeply-held belief in 4th Amendment protections: “As law-abiding U.S. citizens, you have a right to privacy.”
(I recognize and don’t care that the montage below is produced by leftist Media Matters – an organization that I strongly dislike – because the footage is all real, it speaks for itself, and there’s no editorializing. I am capable of vetting information regardless of its provenance or my own tribal loyalties. If you dig through the archives of Hannity talking about national security over the years, you will discover that he very much changes his tune depending on the current political context.)
The PATRIOT Act and related legislation – at least prior to COVID Public Health™ bio-surveillance regime — was the biggest intrusion into Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed privacy in history, enabled and cheerleaded by none more voraciously than Sean Hannity – at least until the other team took power.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin
Examples of Hannity’s hackiness in service to the corporate state are legion, such as his shameless shilling for Kevin McCarthy prior to his confirmation as Speaker, even when the Freedom Caucus and the GOP base were putting up solid resistance. He did this because the donor class and/or his bosses either explicitly told him to or because he just intuitively understands what they want. McCarthy is another useful tool of the governing class.
Aside from being a slimy, sleazy corporate state news actor (I include Fox News under the umbrella of “corporate state news”) whom you would expect to parrot whatever line on any given issue at any given time that happens to be most convenient, the other issue is that people like Sean Hannity do not have any sincerely-held principles or beliefs.
He has done very well for himself maintaining the all-American, football-loving, God-and-country façade for his television and radio show, and attracted a large audience in the process. However, rest assured that, theoretically, if his personal interests called for him to denounce America and become a full-on commie or whatever, he’d be wearing a Che Guevara shirt tomorrow. What matters most to Sean Hannity is Sean Hannity.
Woe unto he who listens to a word out of this charlatan’s mouth and mistakes it for sincerity.
This is one of the reasons that blue-chip advertisers will never abandon Fox News on account of Sean Hannity the same way they did with Tucker Carlson; Hannity is an obedient tool who can be counted on to adjust his on-air coverage of any given issue so as not to offend the sensibilities of said advertisers.
Monetization and service to power are paramount for people such as Hannity, even when those imperatives run up against telling the truth to viewers. Sooner or later, for this reason and others, what remains of Fox News’ audience post-Tucker will get wise to the game and it will implode; mark my words.
If Fox News does survive, it’ll be propped up by corporate advertising in exchange for propaganda disseminated on air disguised as news – the essential reason that organizations like Boeing or Lockheed Martin, which do not produce popular goods and therefore have no ostensible cost-effective reason to advertise on television other than paying for PR.