HANNITY

A reader comments:

The thing that bothered me about the interview is that Hannity didn’t even challenge him from the right. Hannity has never pretended to be an objective journalist. The guy’s a partisan who is explicitly matched with a liberal on his TV show to provide balance, and that’s fine. No one should be surprised or upset that he didn’t ask Cheney whether Iraq is becoming the next Vietnam (there’s plenty of other folks asking those questions anyway). But a journalist of the right should ask him the questions to which conservatives would like some answers. Ask him, e.g., about the administration’s spending habits. He asked him about immigration, but when Cheney said illegal immigrants perform an important function in our economy by doing jobs no one else will do, Hannity should have jumped on him. Why does he think Americans won’t do those jobs? Wouldn’t reducing illegal immigration just force the employers to raise the rates of pay for those jobs so that Americans would do them, and isn’t that a good thing? Etc.

Absolutely. The problem is not Hannity’s bias; it’s his worship of those in power. Here’s his question on immigration:

I take calls from people three hours a day on the radio. One issue that people keep coming back – I would say probably the conservative movement in the country, the one criticism they have, the biggest criticism they have of the administration is the issue of immigration and border patrol. We know the border patrol admits that there are 4 or 5 million people that they know that they don’t get every year that cross the border. And people express their concern about the vulnerability and susceptibility of our borders. Your thoughts?

Your thoughts? Can you get a more puff-ball gentle volley across the net? It’s great to have conservatives in the media. But there’s a difference between conservatives and supine vessels for government spin.