Archive for October 11, 2008

Fact-Checking Hannity’s Smear Job (Part One)

Last Sunday, in a feat to be repeated this Sunday, Hannity released an hour-long hit campaign against Barack Obama, entitled “Barack Obama & Friends: A History of Radicalism, ” that largely rests its message on shameful attempts to infer guilt from silence (“Obama hasn’t released [X]: what is he hiding? Does [X] prove [Y]?”). While you can watch the “documentary” in clips at Hannity’s website, I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a string of logical fallacies, laced with mistruths and decontextualizations, an attempt to confound reason by appealing to emotion, and the dying gasp of a failed ideology. But it is making news. Hence, the first in a series debunking Hannity’s claims, but let’s begin with a word of caution on Sean Hannity.

Any independent voter considering drawing an inference against Obama from Sean Hannity should be advised of Sean Hannity’s friends and his own “history of radicalism.” For the past eight years, Hannity has been a personal apologist for George W. Bush and a pathological liar discounted at every turn by fact-checking organizations. He has alternately asked his viewers to pray for Bush’s re-election, referred to homosexuality as a mental disease (and blamed gay America for creating AIDS through sin), and disclaimed the idea that separation of church & state is an American constitutional value. If you’re listening to bigoted party hack Sean Hannity for objective journalism, there’s something wrong with your conception of the meaning of “objective.”

With this caveat, we’ll begin with a review of the section of “A History of Radicalism” entitled “The College Years.” Watch at your peril; ignore the self-parodying “hide your children” soundtrack.

The piece begins by asking viewers to draw a negative inference from Hannity’s own journalistic failures: unable to find anything about Obama’s years at Occidental College and Columbia University, he concludes that, obviously, Obama must be hiding something. The claim does not logically follow, and is more of an appeal to fear and xenophobia than anything else. Politicians, for fear of exposing their (quite normal and average) friends to public scrutiny, do not make a habit of talking frequently about their humble university beginnings. From Hannity’s own limited coverage of Obama’s (randomly-assigned) college roommate, which amounts to, “OMG he’s a Muslim!”, anyone can see that the concern is obviously well-founded. Hannity has done nothing more than reveal Obama’s concern for the privacy of his college friends. Good job. Further, if we’re to question high school & college reputations when assessing our presidential candidates, what of John “McNasty” McCain, the unimpressive and ill-tempered bully?

Unable to secure a copy of Obama’s college thesis, entitled “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament,” Hannity assumes the worst, concluding that it is likely radical, opposed to Reagan’s winning Cold War strategy of “peace through strength,” and indicative a dangerous degree of political naivete. From my own history, as a graduate of Rice University’s program in political science, I would expect nothing less. Despite any conception to the contrary, university-level political science is not exactly a practical discipline, nor is it “political” in the partisan sense. Today, as it was twenty years ago, undergraduate-level political science is obsessed with game theory and the logic behind nuclear strategy. It concentrates a theoretical understanding of politics, rather than the generation of practical, implementable strategy. A “journalist” like Hannity would be hard-pressed to find any undergraduate thesis that confronted political reality rather than political theory, and any attempt to draw a political conclusion from Obama’s thesis, especially without reading it, just proves that Hannity doesn’t understand academia, not that Obama doesn’t understand the real world. To say nothing of Hannity’s invocation of the old lie, that Reagan “won” the Cold War by spending Russia to a standstill. Sorry, buddy: finding your enemy dead doesn’t mean you killed him.

In the latter half of this segment, Hannity makes much of the unfortunate statement by former Manhattan leader Percy Sutton, who said that anti-semitic radical Khalid Al-Mansour helped Obama get into Harvard Law School. There’s one big problem with that: Al-Mansour disavows it, Mr. Sutton’s family concurs (explaining that the aging Sutton is unwell, making his statement unreliable), and Sutton was a Clinton supporter who doesn’t know Obama. Enough said. Hannity can continue to lie – and, frankly, I expect nothing less – but that’s all it is.

All that remains is Hannity’s invocation of Saul Alinsky, the founder of modern-day community organizing, whose tactics were influential on both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as a liberal bogeman. Hannity refers to Alinsky as a “radical,” as Alinsky styles himself; but the appellation is less a function of his attempt to define himself, as it was an attempt by Alinsky to relate to those in the 1960s who called themselves radicals, while urging them to abandon the violent elements of their “radicalism.” In this sense, the Alinsky method & ideology are not as “radical” as Hannity would have you believe; in fact, it is often patently anti-radical, and violently anti-violence. Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals spills a great amount of ink castigating “the bomb-throwers” for the ineffectiveness and offensiveness of their methods, and arguing instead for non-violent subtle protest. In a phrase, Alinsky is less Farrakhan and more King. The Alinsky method turns upon mobilization: raising awareness of community problems (by statement of fact, not “trickery” as Hannity alleges) to fan discontent and anger, thus spurring collective action to secure modest gains. Exemplum gratis: NPR highlights how Alinsky used the political equivalent of practical jokes to secure the basic conveniences of life, like better trash pickup service, for impoverished Chicago. How…terrifying? To the surprise of none, Hannity’s Alinsky is a straw man conjured up to scare middle-class white America; the real Alinsky is quite different. Don’t be fooled.

Further, and perhaps more importantly, to whatever extent Barack Obama endorsed and engaged in Alinsky’s tactics while a community organizer, his campaign functions as an open repudiation of the same. Alinsky strove to make the lower classes aware of oppression, and highlighted the rich/poor dichotomy in urban America, to compel them to fight it. Obama’s message of an American unity of purpose is the diametric opposite of this admittedly divisive tactic.

Sean Hannity is a liar incapable of generating anything approximating a fact-intensive “documentary.” Don’t believe the lies. Next time: Obama’s ties to Acorn… not so extensive, actually.

John McCain’s Negative Turn: Obama Called it in July

As of the time of this writing, McCain’s website listed 27 positive ads (hyping McCain’s service record) and 42 negative ads (attacking Barack Obama). ((Most ads are mixed; judged by “primary purpose.”)) Notably, in scrolling down the list of McCain’s ads (recent ads at the top), it takes a while to get to the first “positive” ad, and most of McCain’s negative ads, in contrast to Obama’s, focus not on policies but on fearmongering. Depressing? Yes. But eminently predictable.

McCain Begging from Investment Bankers: Potential for Humor

If John McCain sent you a prepaid & addressed return envelope, attached to a solicitation for donations, what would you send him? This is the problem faced by Phil (h/t philfiles), whose friend, a Wall Street financier, just got hit up for donations. You know your campaign’s in trouble when (1) you’re asking for money from employees of a firm you just voted to bail out, and (2) you can’t trust your supporters to be excited enough to pay for postage.