The right-wing Media Research Center's Brent Bozell was on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night to talk about how horrible the American media have been in covering the situation in Egypt. How have they been horrible? Why, apparently because they aren't being sufficiently Becklike in fearmongering over an imminent radical Islamist takeover:
BOZELL: What happens when the government crumbles? What happens when this country is reduced to utter anarchy? What happens when the killings begin and the death begins? Are they still going to credit Barack Obama's soaring oratory for that, or are they going to separate them? What happens if an Islamic caliphate takes over? Are they going to credit his soaring oratory at that point? No they won't.
And what happens, Brent Bozell, if the government remains standing but reconstitutes itself as a democratic republic? What happens when the violence subsides? Will you and Hannity be going on the air and abjectly apologizing to your audiences and the American public and President Obama and to your media colleagues for needlessly fearmongering and spreading panic?
Um, no. You won't.
But Bozell reserved his special reservoir of venom for Chris Matthews, who dared compare the Muslim Brotherhood to the Tea Party. This, of course, made Hannity's an Bozell's collective pea-sized brains explode:
BOZELL: Look, I listen to Chris Matthews and I have two reactions to that. My first reaction is, 'Let's put aside civility for just a minute and to say, I'm just so sick and tired of these disgusting, horrible, despicable attacks, I'm going to slug you and deck you one of these days.'
But that's wrong. That's the wrong reaction. The right reaction is to listen to him, and to listen to him clearly, and just start laughing at the guy.
Look, if a meteor came out of the heavens and hit New York City, he would blame the Tea Party for it. He would blame Michele Bachmann for it.
HANNITY: No. He would probably blame George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. Let's be honest.
BOZELL: Yeah, but if it hit Fox News, he would say it's OK.
Yeah, and if it his NBC News instead, Bozell and Hannity would say it was OK.
Especially because we know that "first reaction" is, for right-wing clowns like these two, the one we're going to get most of the time. Especially when it's being encouraged by top-tier pundits on a cable network with an audience of millions.
Oh, but if a liberal protester is overheard saying nasty things, why, that's proof positive that it's the "left" that cannot be civil.
