





Any of you that know me personally know that I like to refer to myself as an "angry moderate." The reason is that the term 'moderate' is often times seen has being passive or undecided. I most definitely have views and beliefs that I am very passionate about, but they also happen to fall on both ends of the political spectrum.





For my readers out there that love Fox News and Sean Hannity, don't worry; Michael Moore is next.









This morbidly obese man wants to talk to you about heath care









Today, however, we take on Sean Hannity. According to his Fox News bio , Mr. Hannity is "one of the most prominent and influential voices in the country." This is a tad scary to me (especially as someone that more often than not holds conservative views) since he is also a blatant liar.





Now wait one second...before half of you go closing your web browsers and/or grabbing pitch forks and torches to carry to my house, just hear me out.



What many people don't understand is that pundits like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, and Ed Schultz are not news reporters. They are television show hosts that are not paid for accurate reporting, but are instead compensated based on television ratings and ad revenue.





If one of them starts doing a string of shows where they simply say "you know, I can see both sides of the issue on this," then their target audiences (paranoid/angry conservatives or paranoid/angry liberals) will tune in somewhere else to get their daily dose of crazy.





You many overdose on crazy while listening to Alex Jones







In fact, according to a recent court ruling, news media is In fact, according to a recent court ruling, news media is legally allowed to lie and protected by the 1st amendment for doing so. So while folks like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh may drive you nuts, this may be a situation where the game should be hated more than the players...and their audiences that gives anything they say credence.









Now, back to Sean Hannity. While I could probably dedicate an entire blog to how terribly this man likes to distort the truth (and some folks actually have ), I have picked a few of my favorites. In our first clip, Hannity shows President Barack Obama at a 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. Sean is outraged (and rightfully so, if it was true) that Barrack Obama wants to give a voice to 9/11 sympathizers...that is, until Jon Stewart of the Daily Show and Media Matters play the clip below in context.









Yes, it seems that President Obama really didn't want to hear any crap from 9/11 sympathizers and that Hannity just cropped the clip to fit his own agenda. But hey, it's a mistake that can happen to lots of news outlets. Maybe this was the only time...or maybe...









