Why is Sean Hannity spending so much time shouting down and/or mercilessly insulting so many of his liberal guests? Two weeks ago, I heard Michael Medved interview a liberal professor, Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas who wrote an article claiming we’ve already lost the war in Iraq and this is a good thing. It was the typical, “America is an evil empire” diatribe, and Medved (whose show airs on XM Radio, Channel 166 from 3pm to 6pm, Monday through Friday) as usual, did a great job of tearing down Jensen’s line of reasoning and exposing his weak arguments.

Ultimately, after listening to the two of them (Medved and Jensen), I decided that, while Jensen stuck valiantly to his guns, he was out of his league. It’s one thing for the professor to impose his beliefs on his captive classroom audience, but in the real world, the vast majority of us are just not buying. Probably most of his students aren’t either, they just can’t say anything for fear of getting a failing grade for daring to disagree.

The very next week, however, Jensen was a guest on Hannity’s show, and the overall tone of the show was quite different. When I turned on my radio (XM Radio channel 124 from 3pm to 6pm) to listen to Hannity, he was in the midst of shouting Jensen down, calling him names, saying things like “you lefties,” etc. Jensen, to his credit, was trying to calmly make his points, but just could not get through all the shouted insults and accusations.

It was, in a word, lame! I actually felt sorry for Jensen and was quite peeved with Hannity. Was Hannity trying to ruffle Jensen’s feathers, knock him off balance in order to get him to react in anger? Whatever he was trying to do, it sounded pitiful to me.

After a few minutes, I had to turn to a different station (Medved, as a matter of fact). I was just too disgusted to continue listening to the tirade.

Now, if this were an isolated incident, I’d have been okay with it. But this is something I’ve seen more and more from Hannity, and he’s not the only one who does this. It’s just one of the reasons why my dial has been much more consistently tuned to Medved’s show during my afternoon drive.

I’m wondering; is this something that happens to some members of the media when they become really popular? Hannity, for instance, co-hosts a TV show on Fox, has authored two books to date, writes articles, is invited to many speaking engagements, goes on book tours, etc. With all that going on, does he have the time to really prep for his show the way he needs to?

Is Hannity overcommitted; trying to make up for a lack of preparation with an approach akin to bullying? I wonder…

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com