The unabashed bigotry of Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If you want to know why much of the rest of the world hates America, you don't have to look any further than Fox News. Sure, America's mighty military, economic, and cultural imperialism is cause for concern, but what about the bigotry that is spewed day after day and night after night on that purveyor of partisanship and untruth? Gays, blacks, Muslims, you name it. There are so many Others in Fox's crosshairs, but there is more than enough bigotry there to go around. Consider this -- yet another example -- via Think Progress:

This past weekend, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) delivered a speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of his Protestant denomination, the United Church of Christ. In the speech, Obama argued that faith in the United States has been "hijacked" by "the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us."

[Monday] night on Fox's Hannity and Colmes, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter responded to Obama's comments by implicating him as a terrorist. Coulter remarked, "Anyone named B. Hussein Obama should not use the words 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence." Host Sean Hannity added that Obama’s remarks were part of a "black separatist agenda."

As I repeated again and again in my recent post on Chris Matthews's phobia of the sisterhood, I'm not making this up. It's all for real. Coulter did yet again make an offensive remark about Islam and Hannity did yet again make an offensive remark about blacks. They and their kind just keep on rolling out the hate -- sensationalist language to arouse their hateful audiences, which are rather large on the right (given how popular they are).

Do they believe it? Are Coulter and Hannity genuine bigots? Maybe, maybe not, but I suspect so. They may play up how they say what they say in order to shock, but this ongoing routine of bigotry is no act. There is sincerity to their bigotry, and they mean it. There is theater about it, to be sure, but the act, such as there was any act, has been internalized so completely that it can no longer be distinguished from reality. And yet I doubt even this. The bigotry seems to come too naturally to them for it to be mere internalization of an act. Coulter can say that she wishes John Edwards "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot -- and she did say this on ABC's Good Morning America on Monday (see Crooks and Liars) -- and there you have it, yet more of the same, the same that keeps coming over and over. All you have to do is watch Fox News or any of the other media outlets that for whatever reason -- fear, ideology, ratings -- provide a public platform for such bigotry without seeming to care much about the consequences.

At least -- at least -- there was Elizabeth Edwards, who called in to MSNBC yesterday to challenge Coulter's "personal attacks" and "language of hate". And what did Coulter do? The predictable: deny, then attack. Again.

When your language is the language of hate -- that is, when you are a bigot through and through -- what else are we to expect?