Now that Alan Colmes has been exiled to the Siberia of Fox Radio (did he jump or was he pushed?), Hannity has remade his tv show like someone newly divorced, trying to scrub away any lingering trace of his former partner. There’s no longer even the slimmest pretense of being anything other than a showcase for the fringe right. For example: over the past two nights, he’s run an “exclusive interview” with — oh, the excitement — Rush Limbaugh!
And there’s a very telling passage, in which Limbaugh says, “The culture, we’ve lost the culture Sean. We have lost pop culture. It is unrealistic to expect that people watching MTV, going to see the rot Hollywood’s putting out, listening to the rot music is today, that every four years they’re going to go into a voting booth and vote Republican, vote conservative.”
After years of attempts to make conservatism cool somehow, this is its new face, much the same as it ever was: a cranky old man complaining about the movies and music the young people like these days.
As if to underscore the point, later in the program Hannity brings in Pat Boone to comment on the week’s news. Pat Boone.
They’re writing off most of the population — what else can they do?–and focusing on their true base: the over-75 crowd. And I wish them the best of luck with that strategy.