Fox News Hearts San Francisco
It's been a bad week for the Republican Party. So bad, in fact, that Cheney shooting a 78 year old man might have been the best thing to happen, if anything to take people's attention away from much more awful stuff. And so with polls sagging, scandals mounting, and bodies dropping, the RNC flashed the bat signal and out to the rescue came Fox News. Cause what rallies the conservative base more? Love of small government and deficit cutting? Bwah. No, it's beating up on wussy, liberal, America-hating, straw-man liberals. Which is why this week Fox News sent out their big guns and went big game hunting in San Francisco, the Quailtard covey of wussy, liberal, America-hating, straw-man liberals.
The big show was Tuesday night when Hannity & Colmes not only had our very own Gerardo Sandoval on their show to be lamb to the slaughter and discuss the possibly earth-shattering news that the Board of Supes don't want a WWII era battleship to be berthed in the Bay, but Hannity was live in SF, parachuted into enemy territory as it were. They were so into it, in fact, they hyped the story all night.
It didn’t go well.
Screenshot by Luke Thomas of the SF Sentinel
The story began with a history lesson on the U.S.S. Iowa and an interview with Merilyn Wong, the man who has been trying to get the Iowa into San Francisco for years. We could tell this wasn't going to go so well for Gerardo the moment Hannity started calling Wong a great American and Colmes said he agreed with Hannity.
Enter Sandoval who immediately had trouble from the get-go, as Hannity kept him off balance by constantly asking Sandoval whether or not he was a supporter of Nazi Germany and WWII-era Imperial Japan. Sandoval had trouble answering back not only because of the preposterousness of the question, but because Hannity kept on interrupting him. But then Colmes- Colmes!- jumped in and asked Sandoval whether he thought we should have a military at all and when Sandoval said "no" it was on. How bad did it go? Over the sound of tens of Fox producers and executives achieving simultaneous orgasm, Alan Colmes, the man who was kicked out of the patsy union for being too much of a patsy, tore into Sandoval. You know in the movies when the picked on wimpy who's been holding all their anger in then finally unleashes it? Like Ralphie in the Christmas Story? That was Colmes wailing on Sandoval. It was so bad Sean Hannity had to come in to calm Colmes down. And all Sandoval could do was sit there and be the deer in the headlights as he tried to comprehend why nobody thought it was a brilliant idea like they do when he hangs with all of his Supe buddies.
And on Monday, SF's #1 fan, Bill O'Reilly, got Angela Alioto and Police Officer's Association President, Gary Delagnes to discuss the recent Chron stories about police abuse and the impeachment initiative. This may be a shock, but O'Reilly sided with Delagnes about police abuse, probably because Delagnes blamed it all on the liberal agenda of the Chronicle, a viewpoint that Bill finds as irresistible as falafel. O'Reilly even said at one point telling the viewing public that "if you have 100 (bad) officers out of 2200, that's not a lot...and I'm not sure what the big deal is out of that. Most other police forces say 'gee, just a hundred… that's not so bad.'"
Sadly for Bill, all the substantive talk about a substantive issue kept him from discussing the impeachment issue. There was so little time that he was only able to cut Alioto off once as she prattled on about smoking bans by saying "I don't think the rest of the country want San Francisco calling the shots on the war on terror." Oh, snap!
One has to wonder after watching all of this week's hijinks just why any San Francisco politician would appear on these shows? Love of their own voice? Belief that somehow they'll be able to dazzle Hannity or O'Reilly with the superiority of their progressive beliefs that they'll have them throwing rocks through Starbucks windows during the next anti-globalization rally? Or is it just like every other poor sucker who appears on a reality show, a strong sense that any sort of humiliation is worth it if they get to be on TV?