• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 705 0

his quest for excellence and higher standards, and that Hannity, full of contempt for both his readers and the truth, was twisting this good man’s words into a noose of lies. In fairness, however, I went back to the article Hannity was quoting, and examined Mr. Mills’s words for myself. Was he, as Hannity implied, bumbling around, hoping that someone would tell him what the kids in his schools were doing all day? I’ll report. You decide. Here’s how Mr. Mills starts:

“When you look at schools in relation to the accountability system, New York City schools have a long way to go.”

Now for a little context. Richard Mills was the person who had created that accountability system. In fact, just the year before, Mills had been presented with the prestigious Corning Award for Excellence because, among other things, he had set tough new academic standards and required rigorous testing of all students’ progress. The difficulty of the tests that Mills himself had imposed had led to the low test scores Hannity cited. Back to the article:

“There’s no simple fix,” he said. “I would peel the onion. I would ask questions about all the fundamentals that go on in school.”

And that’s where Hannity started quoting him—when Mills started asking questions about all the fundamentals. So when Mills asked “Is it teaching?” or “What are they reading?” he didn’t mean it literally. He was using what’s called “a rhetorical device.”

But you knew that, Sean. And still you presented it as if the man had no clue what was going on in his schools. Do you see why that’s obnoxious? And not just obnoxious, but also dishonest? And, frankly, stupid?

Let’s do another one. During one of his endearing liberal-bashing jags, Hannity spits out: “They tell us that fuel-burning SUVs are bad for America, but flag-burning SOBs aren’t.” Well, Sean, fuel-burning SUVs burn fuel. And there are about fifty million of them. They contribute to global warming and our dependence on oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, which fund the very terrorism you profess to be so upset about. Flag-burning, on the other hand, is relatively rare. And what’s more, Saudi Arabia does not produce American flags. Most American flags are made in Taiwan, a staunch ally.

Here’s another ridiculous thing he says. In keeping with his uncompromising stance against terrorism, Hannity takes a tough principled stand against John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. I’m with Hannity when he calls Lindh a traitor, but what really irks me is when he uses Lindh to malign an entire county. No one man can represent an entire county, unless that county is Climax County, Montana, which does indeed have a single resident—Gerard Wagner of County Rd. 1. Ho there, Gerard.

Here’s Hannity:

Named after John Lennon,2John Lindh was born in Marin County, a wealthy, liberal suburb of San Francisco. He grew up in a veritable ideological Disneyland of moral relativism, political correctness, and not-too-subtle anti-American multi-culturalism, the kind that preaches that America is a racist, sexist, bigoted, imperialist, homophobic, and thus fundamentally evil and oppressive nation.

It’s a wonder that Marin produced only one American Taliban and not thousands, isn’t it? We’re lucky al Qaeda didn’t establish a training camp right there in Sausalito. Hannity keeps hacking away:

He grew up feeding his mind on The Autobiography of Malcolm X, not Moses or Peter or Paul . . . In time, Lindh converted from anything-goes liberal agnosticism to hardcore Middle Eastern radical Islam.

Before reading this, I had never considered the direct line between liberal agnosticism and hard-core, radical Islam. But Hannity has a strong case. So many of my liberal, agnostic women friends from college gradually relinquished their freedoms and decided to spend the rest of their lives in chadors, avoiding the gaze of men.

In contrast to Lindh’s depraved childhood environment, Hannity trumpets his Long Island childhood in the protective embrace of the Catholic Church. Gee, nothing weird happened to cute little boys in the Catholic Church,