If I was a Conservative, this would piss me off

I saw Sean Hannity’s new show, “Egotistical Jackass” last night. The highlight was him declaring Sean Penn an “Enemy of the State” for making anti-American statements. Really? Sean Penn? Isn’t that so, like, 2003? At least Cindy Sheehan or Keith Ellison would be somebody current. Come on, Sean, your first show and you’re beating up on Senn Penn? Who’s next, Rosie O’Donnell? Rob Schneider?

Sean must be taking yoga or something, because after Enemy of the State’s ying came its ever so-moronic yang, a "Great American". Now, I was actually curious about who Hannity would pick for this one- would it be a Bush administration crony? A Republican politician? An injured serviceman? A Fox News employee? Or maybe Sean Hannity, for his courageous decision to launch a new show in the face of the overwhelming liberal bias of the media? Hell, let’s just give Sean a Pulitzer for breathing.

No. It was a mother from middle-America who cares so much about the troops that she sends them… are you ready? Cookies.

That’s right, baked goods. The American hero is a wannabe Betty Crocker.

See, this is the kind of crap you get when you’re convinced that criticism equals negativity, equals hostility to America, its causes or its people. It forces you to look for bullshit like this because your programming or philosophical perspective only allows you to like “good” news or positive people.

You know who’s much more heroic than the cookie mom? Mothers sending their kids body armor. Yeah, it’s a sweet story, but it’s total pabulum; absolute inconsequential rot. It’s not even good enough to be ironic like when we gave Kissinger a Peace Prize. This Mom made DESSERT, and that makes her a Great American? In what alternate universe? What does she get if she makes pie, or, be still my beating heart, a three-course dinner? Somebody get me a Congressional Medal of Honor.

This kind of mentality restricts debate and limits who’s legitimate for each side to talk to and hear out, and it’s utterly self-defeating, and particularly MORONIC when done by people who’s job is ostensibly to INFORM people. When you decide it’s not cool to listen to people being “negative” you wind up ignoring real problems (like no body armor) and being forced to hide your head in the sand (the war’s going great). If I hear one more jackass on Fox whine that the media isn’t reporting the “good stories” from Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m going to shoot someone. It doesn’t matter how many schools your built if people are getting blown up crossing the street, ok?

I disagree with the conservative ideology, but I respect that it can be a legitimate point of view. What’s illegitimate is censoring information because it doesn’t conform with your ideology. Good news from Iraq? Great. Let’s talk about it. Bad news? Let’s talk about that too. But only allowing yourself to talk about nice topics leads to praising chocolate chip cookies like they’re going to bring world peace. Unless those cookies can stop machine gun rounds, Sean Hannity has no business talking about this shit, and should be embarrassed to be peddling this kind of patronizing crap to his audience, who, if they weren’t already brain-dead from watching his regular show and listening to him on the radio, would be so offended they would boycott him faster than French champagne.

Tonight on Sean's other show we got to go over the Ellison crap… again. Mercifully, Hannity kept his mouth shut during the segment- probably because they only gave it about two minutes worth of airtime (maybe the Malibu fire cut in).

Jay Sekulow, angry Christian attorney (a Jewish convert to Christianity, Sekulow brings Jewish tenaciousness and general pissed-offed-ness and offers them to the Christian right. What a combo. Sekulow consistenly manages to sound outraged as only a Jewish lawyer appearing on national Television and with his own daily radio show can. )- "We live in a country with a history of ceremonial deism, which is part of our Judeo-Christian tradition. Once you get out of our tradition, you get into a slippery slope. Better he should use nothing. That’s why we start the Supreme Court proceedings with, “God Bless America and this honorable court”. If you’re going to go outside of the American tradition, don’t use anything at all.”

Sekulow, of course, is forgetting that it is perfectly constitutional to use a banana for the MOCK ceremony. Hannity and Sekulow are acting like Ellison is setting up a muezzin on the House Floor.

Sekulow concluded by saying elected officials need to respect people’s religious traditions and sensibilities- and that the whole Judeo-Christian thing represents a “national consensus”. The only problem with all this, of course, is that it’s much ado about nothing. There’s no law that keeps Ellison from doing what he did, and the fact is, there’s no practical or physical consequence to it, either. Furthermore, the so-called consensus Sekulow referenced is, as noted before when fisking Dennis Prager, largely superficial and illusory. Not only is the Judeo-Christian stuff a historical fiction, it also demands a tacit acceptance and adherence (or at least no objection) to the most vocal and extreme elements of Christianity. Essentially the loudest Christians get to set the terms, and everyone else is commanded to follow suit so as to not violate the consensus. Considering that the country is becoming more diffuse about matters such as the nature of God, the so-called consensus is starting to look like it exists in few places outside of people like Sekulow's brains.

The culture war is alive and well, and manifesting itself in the most idiotic things people can think of.

"What a country!"