The second in the "Worst of America" series, we analyze Hannity's campaign to manipulate public perception of Obama, deconstructing Hannity's exploitation of a fanatical black preacher to paint himself as heroic. Looking through his tricks and imbalance, we ask if Hannity's actions actually run counter to the core precepts of Conservatism.

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Previously in "Hannity & Limbaugh: The Worst of America?" we invited discussion on the legal domestic propaganda techniques used by our country's two most-listened to talk radio "entertainers", suggesting that the right wing talk phenomenon evolved directly and deliberately from deregulation, creating a schizophrenic media environment where we must navigate extremes in right or left wing opinion and commentary, and will rarely glimpse the self-contained balance in media that previous generations knew.

After the essay ran for about a week as a top hit on major search engines under either the term 'Hannity' or 'Limbaugh', Hannity started speaking about bloggers in their basements posting terrible, horrible things about him, wearing only their underwear. He reused this quip relentlessly throughout the week. Though many left wing bloggers do curse Hannity in the worst ways imaginable, it made me look again at my OpEd. Did I "attack" Hannity or were these legitimate criticisms? Was there balance? Did I appeal to the intelligence of my reader, or pander to their basest emotions?

If I was one of the 'amateur journalists' Mr. Hannity was referring to, one thing is for sure, he did not discuss my arguments on their merits - rather he painted me as a half-naked subterranean hack. Just for the record, my basement is too cold for just underwear - our home heating costs have tripled since 2000.

Hannity was also reactive this week to flak he took for his ongoing Rev. Wright diatribe, where he has been seeking to cram-fit Barack Obama's ideology somehow together with the slyly spliced sound clips of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's worst moments, speculating that Obama must endorse racist policies because he did not leave the church or publicly denounce those comments before.

Hannity held that Obama's claim he wasn't "in the pews" when Wright's harshest words were spoken is at odds with a remark made in his Philadelphia race speech just days later, explaining that he had heard Wright make controversial statements. Were they specifically the same exact statements in the clips? Hannity cried "Gotcha!", in the assumption that Obama was reversing himself. But what do you think?

It was a keen caller who summed it up best for me, and I credit Hannity for allowing the call, because it showed more level-headed thinking then I'd heard on his show in months and thereby, a sorely missed voice of balance. The caller was an older African-American woman married to a 30-year-plus retired military man, speaking in a disarming "church lady" oratory that may have charmed Hannity's screeners enough to get her by.

Once on the air, she told Hannity his Obama-Wright chestnut was not only repetitive but fundamentally ill-founded, as Obama himself had never expressed any such radical views, even after 20 years in a supposed "racist" church - just the opposite, he emerged with greater and greater messages of racial and social unity. Hannity pressed her, and the woman conceded Wright's statements were bad, but that it was a stretch to claim Obama had "internalized" those sentiments.

Hannity quickly moved on, continuing in stride to make the same guilt-by-association case over and over, starting and ending almost every segment with it. With the odd exception, calls overwhelmingly and continually reinforced Hannity's notion that Obama was untrustworthy. After a few days, Sean's tactic bore fruit: polls showed a dent in Obama's numbers.

But this pounded-in-to-the-ground ploy also caused a backlash from those arguing the link was too flimsy, complaining that he had made his point and was overdoing it, spending more then a week on such a minor issue while fully ignoring the Bear Stearns bailout or resignation of Admiral Fallon. Hannity's mission had been simple - to plant doubt and suspicion - and it worked. But now Hannity needed a strategy to portray himself as more objective and substance-based because of the criticisms by perceptive media-manipulation watchers.

To do this, he enlisted the help of a radical black preacher who had made outrageously inflammatory statements in church, calling Obama a pimp because of the "Obama girl" video a female fan made independently and posted on YouTube. This preacher claimed Obama had a duty to renounce the video because the girl's breasts were so scandalously large, showing the level of his logical acuity and bias, but it got worse.

The pastor preached of Obama, "He was born trash." after "His African in heat father went a-whoring after a trashy white woman." Hannity saw opportunity here, promoting this sideshow hatemonger from obscurity to guest star on Fox TV and multiple appearances on America's second biggest radio show, having the preacher play the dastardly foil to Hannity who suddenly had a just and heroic side.

Hannity defended Obama's birth, but in a most unusual way, saying over and over he did not agree but while repeating the damning parts again - as in, "I disagree that Obama is just born trash and that his mother was a whore", instead of "I disagree", or better yet, not giving the maniac preacher air time at all. Subliminal? You decide.

On his self-manufactured higher ground, Sean boasted about how he opposes Obama on issues, but mentions only briefly and vaguely the same stances on the Iraq war, higher taxes and nationalized health care that could fit almost any Democrat.

Here we see Hannity's guile - aware that he needs to be perceived as balanced and objective. If we feel our host is presenting both sides of a story in balance, we'll be less likely to check out other views independently. After a fortnight of smearing Obama with Wright's audio clips, literally moving national polls, the next week's "balancing" trick erased the slate.

In the United States of Amnesia, this is the name of the game. Hannity's broadcasting imbalance is just like steroids in baseball. He can take calls and choose topics with more transparency and journalistic credibility, but when he mainlines a little intentional distortion, his effectiveness shoots through the roof. Just think of Hannity and Limbaugh as political discussion with an asterisk.

This week, it's back to the guilt-by-association trick on Hannity's show, this time using William Ayers, a member of the radical Weather Underground group who bombed government targets decades ago. Now an accepted member of liberal Chicago social and academic circles, his connections to Obama are not even clear. Hannity bellows about Obama commenting he and Ayers were "friendly", and they appeared in panel discussions before. So Hannity works with what he has - you can tune in all this week to hear him hysterically exaggerate about Obama's "terrorist" pal. The exciting part will be listening to hear if any caller gets through to mention that Ayers was exonerated of wrongdoing when it was found the government was eavesdropping on his communications illegally! This is why Hannity broadcasts in a bubble.

Hannity has occasionally participated in point/counterpoint public debates, but insisted on matching up with tabloid hosts Alan Colmes or Jerry Springer, either a far cry from someone like Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann or Katrina vanden Heuvel. When Sean went up against Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, the shouting and jeering audience made it a poor venue for political self-examination or critical thought on either side, exemplifying exactly the chaos and noise that today's polarized media encourages, sending people frenzied and conflicted into their mental turtle shells, or to seek out safety in numbers.

Free speech was a cornerstone ideal of the founding fathers - it separated the U.S. from the tyrannical elite-rule of almost all other previous governments. Today we have free speech, but it's in a vacuum. Before media deregulation, stations had a legal and ethical obligation to provide balance to the reasonable best of their ability. But once the legal requirement was struck down, the ethical self-policing gave way, with profit and power trumping public interest.

Gradually, the U.S. government began employing the research and marketing techniques used by Madison Avenue for maximizing profits. The same successful insight that led advertisers to "branding" was co-opted by broadcasters to encourage "loyal" listening. And politicians were not far behind, notably the contending campaigns in presidential elections, using demographic targeting, focus group testing and "passion plays" - pitches that trigger specific emotional responses.

In the 1980 election, public manipulation went high-tech, using sophisticated automated surveys and computers to analyze enormous samplings of people and extrapolate bottom line psychological triggers. From this, Reagan discovered the desire for American voters to feel as if they are in control, not the government. He peddled this perception with unprecedented success.

It was then we began to see the condescending term "the American people" in speeches, making the leap that assumes proven majority agreement. Gradually changing from "I believe the American people will approve" to "the American people will approve", to "the American people approve", we routinely hear falsehoods like this in media and politics today - completely baseless claims that project the speaker's views onto We the People. Because we're so used to advertising, marketing and legal scams today, we're all too forgiving of this trick.

When Hannity says "The American people want to win in Iraq", it's a perfect example of his deceit. In fact, the majority of Americans (and Iraqis) want the occupation ended and have for years.

Ironically, however, this works. Instead of revolting, people comply. With news and media traveling at the speed of thought, many of us simply have become "ditto heads" - itself a label that acknowledges a dearth of free thought. As half of Americans under 44 haven't read a single book in the last year, it's not surprising how few of us engage in critical thought or careful research. Businesses bank on this - hence the "fine print". It is factored in with great certainty that we will not read detailed terms and conditions. We could hardly read them if we tried as the font sizes are so tiny and visually compressed and the language written in the thickest legalese. So what do we all do? We just hit the "I Agree" button.

The continuing existence of email spam is a testament to the gullibility of America. With only a third of young people graduating high school in many large U.S. cities, it's with good reason advertisers and politicians dumb down their messages. Discerning Americans are outnumbered, and few of us will ever have access to the information we need to vote, vetted by professional journalists in editorial balance. Instead we get dueling propaganda wars, playing on our anger, fears and hopes, but not our intelligence.

Here's a quick test: If you were a broadcaster would you knowingly suppress relevent counterpoints? Would you cherrypick news stories to try to move your audience towards your politics? How would you screen calls to apportion the points of view? Should whites and minorities be represented in proportion to the actual population? What about anti-war callers?

After you have answered these questions, consider next how you might explain current events to your own children. Suddenly, many who initially felt it was okay to shape opinion using deceit and omission change their tune. This is what we need to address in our society, the acceptance of dishonesty.

A few years ago, debate raged over a proposal that profit margins should be regulated in auto sales after consumer guides published just how to play hardball with dealers, their exact cost and the minimum offer they will accept. The question was then posed, why should all the other buyers be penalized for their ignorance? Naturally dealers didn't want to lose their gravy profits, this is a basic tenet of freemarket capitalism, charging whatever the buyer will bear, or to quote Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal. But when does profiteering become exploitation?

To me, this lies in the ethics of the seller. If they can live with themselves, and the buyer chooses not to do their homework, it's fine with me. But suppose they started to badmouth their competitor. Suppose they were lying or bluffing to close a deal, for example telling buyers the prices were going to go up next week.

This is the reason for professional ethics associations - self-policing the integrity and honesty of members whose greed may blind them to the moral responsibility all Americans have to contribute positively to their communities. You may be snickering at this as naiveté today, but isn't that a statement about contemporary American society? Where Trump's The Apprentice today promotes the killer instinct to profit in spite of any ethical considerations?

In Hannity's case, he plays clips and quotes out of context, hides or misrepresents the current attitudes of our country in correct proportion. He limits or cuts short dissenting phone calls, and often refuses to volunteer known detractions to his arguments, even if only to defend himself.

So I ask his listeners to acknowledge that Hannity broadcasts intentional distortions. Yes or no? Are you the listener who knows better but finds it interesting to witness the media spectacle? Do you like to monitor exactly how the gullible are manipulated? Do you accept it because you know the full story is available elsewhere?

In terms of the strictly defined morals of Christianity, Judaism, or even karma, it's abandoning the Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Beyond ethics, I assert that this, in the context of political talk, is unpatriotic, unbrotherly and more akin to the media control found in both communist and fascist states where radio does not reflect popular attitudes.
If, on the other hand you do not believe Hannity broadcasts propaganda, please go with God! I read recently where there were two kinds of Republicans today - millionaires, and suckers. But this saying may be unfair to Eisenhower Republicans, because there was a day when strict ethics, fiscal responsibility and small government meant just that.

After Reagan began steering the party, however, we saw a shift. The ethics of right versus wrong came to be replaced with the "win at all costs" struggle of us versus them. First them meant communists, but later it was anyone who was sitting on resources we wanted, and eventually, those who do not agree with us.

This brand of anti-Conservative "Conservatism", called Neo-Conservatism, preached a two-faced, duplicitous fiscal policy to go with it's two-faced morality. The economy would be stimulated by constant government interference, in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy, union busting, rampant deregulation, corporate "welfare" bail-outs and runaway corporate-government-lobbying incest or constant tweaking by the Fed. What part of "free market" didn't they understand?

Chiefly coming through the defense spending Eisenhower warned against, the U.S. government began an economic policy that swept a growing federal deficit under the rug.

The prevailing justification for this among politicians (and their cronies in business) was that their personal wealth would insulate their families. So the steps taken to "stovepipe" wealth upwards included instituting a media arm that mesmerizes millions into acceptance and bites off the head of anyone who suggests even incremental change back to 50s-era wealth distribution, shrieking they are Marxists, pinkos, socialists, unpatriotic, or worse yet - liberals, their new term for them.

Just as our "representatives" in the Senate pull down incomes many times higher then the average American, Hannity cannot possibly understand the plight of the middle class taxpayer today, cannot represent the views of someone who would benefit from redistributing the tax cuts to make the wealthy contribute more fairly.

Hannity repeated a few times last week the notion that America is a place where anyone can succeed, provided they work hard, study and sacrifice, putting in 14 to 16 hour work days. That sounds like a place where people might burn out early from hypertension as they grow estranged from their families. Is money really everything in American life today?

As spokesman for the rich, Hannity begs the question - is he a wolf in sheep's clothing? He advocates tax cuts for the rich in order to create jobs for the middle class. But think about this for a moment - the rich get cash and the middle class gets jobs? Many historians and economists agree this is a ruse - we could simply provide tax credits to those who create jobs in one direct step! The rich, acting as gatekeeping middleman between tax breaks and jobs are favored with greater power and leverage then the rest of us, no?

Consider that the government and their corporate donors are all rich themselves, including Hannity, who is raking in a reported $125 million for his current five year contract. He may fancy himself an everyday joe, but sits among the wealthiest upper class, persuading struggling millions for "three hours a day" to trust him. His economic "plan" assumes the rich, once given tax breaks will create jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. As we see, however, American corporations have been doing the opposite, shipping jobs overseas to save on labor costs, dismantling plants and unions within our borders, resulting in less and worse jobs.

Hannity tells us social programs and entitlements are the reason taxes are so high. But as Reagan once said, "the facts show otherwise". It's been the NeoCon Bush administration that has outspent any other, running huge annual shortfalls and tacking the cost of multiple wars and economic stimulus lump-sum payments onto the deficit for our kids and grandkids to figure out. And it's defense spending that eats into our current budget, more then any other consideration, more then any other country spends, and certainly isn't providing adequately for military families. Privatized food-services workers in Iraq are making more in "hazard pay" then the GIs doing the fighting.

Just as Eisenhower warned, defense contractors want our hard-earned tax money, robbing our ability to build schools, repair roads and bridges, or to send our brightest to college to shore up American competitiveness in science and engineering. Hannity blinds us to Ike's admonishment daily, supporting NeoCon war hawks and Reaganomics together without any care to reduce the debt we owe to China, Japan and the Saudis with insane interest piling on by the minute. 

Suppose we take a look not how Hannity is at odds with liberals, but how he is at odds with true Conservatism - fiscal responsibility, strict ethics and small, unintrusive government. I see exactly the opposite from this administration, with Sean Hannity as it's brilliantly deceptive mouthpiece, saying one thing as they are doing another. If you let your own common sense guide you, it's easy to see that Hannity is selling you out - unless, of course, you are a millionaire.

Authors Bio:

(OpEdNews Contributing Editor since October 2006) Inner city schoolteacher from New York, mostly covering media manipulation. I put election/finance reform ahead of all issues but also advocate for fiscal conservatism, ethics in journalism and curbing overpopulation. I enjoy open debate, history, the arts and hope to adopt a third child. Gustav Wynn is a pseudonym, but you knew that.

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