SEAN HANNITY, APPALLED BY RACISM? I DON'T THINK SO

Happy new year -- and thank you, Yastreblyansky, Tom, and Crank, for rattling some cages while I was gone. Excellent work.

So now I see Talking Points Memo giving Sean Hannity credit for a certain level of racial enlightenment:

Sean Hannity Wants Boehner Out As Speaker After Scalise Revelations

Fox News host Sean Hannity wants Rep. Trey Gowdy to challenge John Boehner for Speaker of the House, but the South Carolina Republican says he isn't interested.

Hannity made his thoughts known in a pair of emails to Breitbart News during a rocky week for House GOP leadership, with Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) admitting he spoke at a white supremacist gathering in 2002. Boehner and his leadership team have stood by Scalise....

Breitbart is spinning the story that way as well:

In the wake of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) rebuffing his call to run against Speaker John Boehner after the white supremacy scandal that has rocked Boehner’s ally, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Hannity is calling on every Republican member of the House of Representatives to reconsider whether Boehner is in fact an effective leader.

As is Ed Kilgore:

So it’s looking like hard-core conservatives may be the last to let go of the Scalise scandal. Now Sean Hannity’s using it as a tire iron to club John Boehner....

But Roger Ailes (the good one) is absolutely right:

Hannity wanted Boehner out "before Scalise revelations," because he thinks Boehner isn't ideologically pure. This isn't ancient history, people.

Cliven Bundy's pal Hannity would speak at David Duke's Klavern Khristmas Kavalcade if the price was right. He certainly wouldn't criticize an ally for doing it.

Seriously? We think Hannity is upset about racism? Sean Hannity, whose rise in the world of right-wing media (as I've noted here several times, most recently in 2012), was closely linked to the names Bob Grant and Hal Turner?

Hannity replaced Grant on New York talk radio and later lobbied to get Grant back on the air, even though (or perhaps because) Grant used to say things like this:

Grant's favorite words for blacks include "savages" and "subhumanoids." When black college students gathered at a New Jersey beach, Grant talked of "the savage mind, the primitive, primordial mentality.... As far as that stretch of beach there at Belmar, it's being written off by, shall we say, civilized people."

Referring to thousands of blacks who attended a celebrity basketball game involving rap stars, he spoke of "subhumanoids, savages, who would feel more at home careening along the sands of the Kalahari...people who, for whatever reason, have not become civilized."

The few blacks who call the show can expect to be insulted -- and perhaps derided as "shoeshine boys." In hanging up on a black caller, Grant said: "Get off my phone, you creep, we don't need the toilets cleaned right now." When he hangs up on black women, he yells: "I don't need the windows washed today."

When an African-American caller pointed out that the KKK was more violent than the Nation of Islam, Grant hung up on the "swine": "On the evolutionary scale, you're about 25 generations behind me."

... here's video of Hannity delightedly introducing [Grant] at one of Hannity's "Freedom Concerts." Um, is that a manly kiss I see at 1:30?



And then there's Hal Turner:

... a man named Hal Turner sat before his computer at his suburban home in North Bergen, New Jersey, posting bomb-making tips on his website, hailing the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes" and calling for the murder of immigrants. "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!" Turner wrote.

... To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes...

A guest on Hannity's Fox show once confronted him about his relationship with Turner, and Hannity denied knowing him. Turner responded:

I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

...When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air.

When I utlized that call-in number, Sean would very often come onto that line during commercial breaks so we could chat before I went on the air. Our off-the-air chats grew to an exchange of other phone numbers, me giving Sean my home and cellular number and Sean giving me his direct dial-in number at Fox News channel.

In 1993, My wife got pregnant and around a month later, Sean reported that he and his wife were expecting their first child. We got to talking about things expectant dads talk about and the relationship grew.

…Over the course of the next three or four years, Sean and I spoke regularly off the air about our kids, politics and news of the day. My on-air calls to his show remained regular and welcome....

Sorry, no. Hannity is not upset the racism here.