Sean Hannity Just Asking: Can't We Boycott Rachel Maddow For 'Reasons'?

Those liberal fascists are criticizing me, and that's just like Hitler

So the biggest news about Sean Hannity's Tuesday night show was that it happened. Sean wasn't sent to that big farm upstate where all the disappeared Fox hosts go, and returned to his show after the long weekend. In the A block of his rantfest, Hannity emphasized that while he is definitely not going to keep talking about his completely evidence-free speculation that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the real source of last year's email leaks to Wikileaks, he is still very much on the story, and expects to have big news about it soon. He respects Rich's family so much he's going to just keep talking about how he's not talking about it. Oh, and also, since liberals are trying to destroy him, he's very reluctantly endorsing an effort to name and shame Rachel Maddow's advertisers, although he's against boycotts. As Newsweek's Alexander Narzaryan noted, "Hannity made clear that we would remain committed to his own principles, such as those are."

Oh, but Hannity is really angry that he's being labeled a "conspiracy theorist" just because he's asking questions about a shadowy conspiracy that may have involved Hillary Clinton bumping off Rich for leaking all those emails (which he didn't). Sean Hannity is not now nor has he ever been a conspiracy theorist, no way, and you know what the real conspiracy theory is? The totally made-up story about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election. Not a shred of proof, Hannity said, trotting out a string of clips of intelligence leaders and members of congress saying they hadn't yet seen a "smoking gun," which means there's nothing at all to investigate. A strong case to let it go, from the man who still thinks Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would go to jail for Benghazi if there were any justice in the world.

Hannity then turned to the outrageous actions of Media Matters for America -- that's the "Clinton and George Soros funded Media Matters," mind you -- which has been publicizing Hannity's advertisers, leading a fascist liberal attack to drive him off the air, because, he explained with a straight face, if Hannity is gone, the last bastion of resistance to the liberal agenda will be gone. Which you figure had to have hurt Tucker Carlson's feelings a little. You might also nitpick and point out that even if Hannity were no longer on the air, Republicans still have the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority on the Supreme Court. Clearly not as powerful as Sean Hannity in opposing the liberal agenda, but they might do all right.

Time to fight fire with fire, so Hannity brought on Melanie Morgan and Brian Maloney, a couple of rightwing friends who have started an effort they're creatively calling #StopTheScalpings, whose goal is to Fight "the Suppression of the First Amendment by the Left." On " MediaEqualizer" -- a website that appears to have been revamped overnight for this campaign -- they seek to focus similar calls for advertising boycotts against the biggest promoter of conspiracy theories out there: Rachel Maddow, who has pushed all sorts ofinsane conspiracy stories, like the possibility that Donald Trump has a lot of supporters among white supremacists, or that there are a lot of hinky ties between Russia and people in the Trump campaign. And, yes, when the news about Anthony Weiner's dick-pics first surfaced, Maddow did indeed entertain the possibility they'd been faked -- what makes her not a conspiracy theorist is that once it was clear Wiener was lying about his Twitter account being hacked, Maddow didn't cling to the excuses like a dog with a rotting squirrel carcass.

All the StopTheScalpers want, they say, is fair play: If Media Matters stops trying to take down Hannity, who is, after all, merely asking questions about who killed Sean Rich, then they'll end their effort to inform everyone who advertises on Maddow's conspiracy show. Here's their perfectly reasonable rationale for fair play:

For months there has been a widespread media narrative advancing a conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign and the Russians colluded to release the DNC emails to Wikileaks, to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

To date, Former CIA Director John Brennan, Former FBI Director James Comey, Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Joe Manchin, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, to name a few, have all admitted that there is no evidence to this effect. In spite of this, the liberal media has spent thousands of hours in print and TV coverage to keep this lie alive.

Isn't that some beautiful hair-splitting? The investigation is still underway, but there is somehow "no evidence." None! Why, they sound like a common New York Times! Neither Hannity nor his pals explain how the fascist liberal media got an FBI investigation started, or how the media appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter, but the fact remains: There are no final answers, so why is anyone acting like there's any reality to it at all? If only Fox News and conservative blogs had been around in 1972-74, they might have gotten the Watergate investigation dropped. The site continues:

Hannity is the only the person in America, that we know of, that has actually interviewed the one person who knows the absolute truth as to the origin of the DNC email. All Hannity has been doing is asking questions, if there is no Russia-Trump collusion, then is there another source?

Asking the question is the responsibility of any good journalist, reporter or news personality. And for just asking questions, based on interviews with the head of Wikileaks (who has never been proven wrong in eleven years) and not going along with the monolithic left-wing Russia-Trump collusion, there is now an attempt to silence Hannity.

This is where the site helpfully suggests the real answer to those important questions: Seth Rich was killed by the giant glowering blood-tinged face of Hillary Clinton.

Thank goodness someone has finally had the guts to go after that terrible conspiracy-monger Rachel Maddow! We're certain that "Operation Fight With Fire" (which is not missing a word) will cut Maddow down to size, and that this effort is utterly unrelated to Fox News's slide in the ratings, or the fact that Maddow now has the top-rated show in cable news. It's about responsibility in conspiracy journalism.

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[ Newsweek / Media Matters / ThinkProgress / Media Equalizer ]