Lies, Damned Lies, and the Nut Wing To indicate the mediation of distorted views of reality I allude to below in my rant about infotainment, note the claims made by "Sure I am right" Sean Hannity. Then note the actual reality. Now if people actually watch or listen to this nut wing crap without any exposure to facts, how can we expect them to not be aggressively ignorant? The Document Sean Hannity Doesn't Want You To Read June 16, 2004 Speaking at the Take Back America conference on June 3, American Progress CEO John Podesta said, "I think when you get so distant from the facts as -- as guys like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do, yeah, I think that tends to -- it kind of -- it tends to corrupt the dialogue." Apparently he struck a nerve with Fox News' Sean Hannity. Hannity challenged Podesta to "defend and explain one example where I -- where I said something that was so false." Since choosing just one of Hannity's distortions is too difficult, here are fifteen examples: All Hannity quotes from Hannity and Colmes unless otherwise noted. WMD HANNITY: "You're not listening, Susan. You've got to learn something. He had weapons of mass destruction. He promised to disclose them. And he didn't do it. You would have let him go free; we decided to hold him accountable." (4/13/04) FACT: Hannity's assertion comes more than six months after Bush Administration weapons inspector David Kay testified his inspection team had "not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material" and had not discovered any chemical or biological weapons. (Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03) First of all, this president -- you know and I know and everybody knows -- inherited a recession...it was by every definition a recession" (11/6/02) FACT: "The recession officially began in March of 2001 -- two months after Bush was sworn in -- according to the universally acknowledged arbiter of such things, the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the president, at other times, has said so himself." (Washington Post, 7/1/03) Remember the old Equal Time Doctrine where media had to give equal time to representatives of different parties and/or were expected to suss out the truth? Who got rid of it? Oh yeah, that poster child for facts and truth Reagan killed it.