Last night on Fox News, Sean Hannity and Dick Morris expressed outrage at comedian Wanda Sykes’s act at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Sykes joked that “maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight,” and said she hoped his kidneys fail. Specifically, Hannity couldn’t believe that she compared Limbaugh to a terrorist, saying her jokes were far worse than waterboarding detainees. He and guest Dick Morris then claimed that if a conservative radio host ever made such a comparison, he could be fired or arrested:
HANNITY: Calling him a terrorist, comparing him to bin Laden, et cetera, et cetera, and then wishing kidney failure. Now for all the moral indignation and outrage over waterboarding, what would be worse, wishing an American citizen who has a different point of view that his kidneys fail and to waterboard a terrorist to get information? […]
HANNITY: Now there is a double standard. Now can you imagine if we go through this list here of — what if somebody called Barack Obama, compared him to a terrorist? What if somebody wished him ill? That he wouldn’t do well? […]
MORRIS: He would be carted off in handcuffs. And they should be. No one should make a joke about the president dying and frankly no one should make a joke about someone in political life like that dying.
Ironically, a few seconds later, Hannity asked why Sykes didn’t bring up President Obama’s tenuous link to former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Watch it:
Hannity repeatedly brings up Obama’s connection to Ayers to imply that the President might sympathize with terrorists. Of course, Hannity has never been fired — or arrested — for doing so. Similarly, Morris has claimed that Obama’s relationship to Ayers is “the equivalent of having a close relationship with Osama bin Laden.”
Over at TAPPED yesterday, Adam Serwer also rounded up many of Limbaugh’s previous statements, including his belief that Obama himself is a “terrorist attack,” Obama wants to “murder a million babies a year,” and that if UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown keeps “slobbering” over Obama, he’ll “come down with anal poisoning and may die from it.”
Of course, neither Hannity nor Morris were advocating firing Limbaugh last night.
Transcript:
HANNITY: You know, I’m thinking about this. Rush saying he wants socialism to fail. The press and she got it wrong. He wanted socialism to fail. He’s very, very specific about that. You know what’s worse than — that or the president of the United States laughing at a joke hoping he dies?
MORRIS: Yes. I mean that was a new low, particularly for somebody who was elected saying he wanted to lower the partisan dialogue. Let’s get it straight. Rush Limbaugh is one of the truly creative forces in American politics. He created conservative talk radio.
HANNITY: Absolutely.
MORRIS: He created the whole movement that group surround it . He’s a patriot. He’s a genuine American. Sometimes I don’t agree with him, sometimes I do agree with him. But to besmirch his motivation, to call him a hijacker, to wish him dead, that is not only ridiculous, it’s just so wrong in this political environment.
HANNITY: Calling him a terrorist, comparing him to bin Laden, et cetera, et cetera, and then wishing kidney failure. Now for all the moral indignation and outrage over waterboarding, what would be worse, wishing an American citizen who has a different point of view that his kidneys fail and to waterboard a terrorist to get information? […]
HANNITY: Yes. That’s a good point. Now there is a double standard. Now can you imagine if we go through this list here of — what if somebody called Barack Obama, compared him to a terrorist? What if somebody wished him ill? That he wouldn’t do well?
MORRIS: Yes.
HANNITY: What if somebody, you know, saying that, you know, that he wants somebody to die and laughed?
MORRIS: That would be an arrestable offense. He’s president.
HANNITY: Because he’s president of the United States.
MORRIS: He can’t say that, yes.
HANNITY: But if somebody did they would be considered (INAUDIBLE) — a talk show host said it we’d probably be talking about their firing today.
MORRIS: Not just their firing. Their arrest.
HANNITY: And their —
MORRIS: He would be carted off in handcuffs. And they should be. No one should make a joke about the president dying and frankly no one should make a joke about someone in political life like that dying.
HANNITY: Where are the Bill Ayers jokes? Where’s the Bernardine jokes? Where’s the Reverend Wright jokes? Maybe I’m thinking there’s a lot of material left on the table. Are comedians afraid to go after him?
MORRIS: We’re living it.
HANNITY: All right. Good point. There it is. We got it from Dick.