The only reason why Fox News does this Black Bogeyman thing is because no one told them to stop. Well, there are exceptions. The times they have gone after rappers have not worked out all that well. When Bill O’Reilly went after Ludacris, Russell Simmons launched a boycott against Pepsi for dropping Luda from their ad campaigns. When O’Reilly went after Nas, the rapper joined ColorofChange.org outside Fox News for a demo and was able to turn the tables on him. Now all of Fox News is on Common’s ass. COMMON! The guy raps with the Jonas Brothers and Colbie Caillat! See, they need something to recover from Obama making them look bad for the past two weeks, and conservatives know that if there is one thing that can turn the tide against a popular black politician it is his angry black friends. And the best they can do is Common, who was invited to the White House by the First Lady for a poetry event. Now It’s one thing to decry the violence and misogyny in rap lyrics, but as they went from Luda to Nas, to now Common, you started dealing with rappers who engage less and less with those themes and deal with more political ones. And you need Sean “Friend of Hal Turner” Hannity to do twist and turn a positive rapper into the biggest gangsta thug going. Now this often works because no matter how wrong they are, someone ends up folding and they come out smelling like a rose. They are probably expecting President Obama to distance himself from Common like he did with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Shirley Sherrod if they squawk enough. The problem this time is people like Common even more they do Obama! That means a whole bunch of people are going after Fox News and Sean Hannity, because of this latest campaign. For the record, Hannity’s contention is that Common called for Bush to be killed (he distorts the lyrics to one of his songs), and immediately people are calling him out for his considering he defended Ted Nugent when he threatened then-candidates Obama and Hillary Clinton onstage with an M-16! The Daily Show once again provides us with another montage of Fox News’ duplicity, but especially Hannity’s, and the ease of being able to do so almost on a daily basis to this one network is starting to get on Jon Stewart’s nerves. Welcome to the club, baby. Welcome to the club.

Newshounds.us

Never mind that Sean Hannity welcomed to his radio show white supremacist Hal Turner even after he said that if it weren’t for white people, “black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa,” or that Hannity remains on the advisory board of the organization run by Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson long after he told Hannity & Colmes viewers that most blacks in Tennessee are “so racist” and “always use racism in order to intimidate white America” when race is an election issue. And never mind that Hannity has leapt to defend a variety of white guys who have said some not-very-nice remarks about blacks. And especially never mind that before they were against him, Fox News was praising African American rapper “Common” as “very positive.” Now that some right-wingers are attacking First Lady Michelle Obama’s for inviting him to a White House poetry event, Hannity was so outraged over Common’s supposedly offensive lyrics that the subject was the top two segments on Hannity (plus a later discussion on The Great American Panel segment).

“It seems this administration will never learn its lesson,” Hannity sneered at the outset of the first segment. He complained that Common “has a running list of controversial comments.” But Hannity mostly cited one, a 2007 poem in which Common said, “Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button, Killing over oil and grease, no weapons of destruction, how can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one?” Oh, and Common is a parishioner of Rev. Wright – another African American Hannity loves to attack – and once (gasp!) even performed with Wright at his church.

Guest David Webb, a conservative radio host, said that if a musician had made the same comments about Obama “This should be front page news, Sharpton would be leading a march.”

Maybe it should be front page news but it would probably guarantee such a musician a warm welcome on Fox News. How do I know? Rocker Ted Nugent told then-candidate Obama to “suck on my machine gun” and called Hillary Clinton a “worthless bitch” who should “ride into the sunset” on his machine gun. Hannity not only didn’t condemn Nugent, he called him a friend and defended him on the air. More recently, Nugent said “kill the pigs” in reference to lawmakers who passed health care reform and was called a “fun guy” by Neil Cavuto. Mike Huckabee didn’t mind hosting Nugent, either. I don’t recall Sharpton leading any marches over any of those appearances.

Of course, no segment on Fox News attacking an African American associated with President Obama would be complete without a suggestion or two that Obama is a black radical. Webb knew the script. To Hannity’s almost certain approval, Webb said, “This is the Obama playbook. We see the administration – Wallace Smith’s church in Shiloh, we see him going to the National Action Network after… Al Sharpton once said, ‘He ain’t one of us until it’s time for the kingmakers to makehim king.’ Now they’re gonna play this class and ethnic… warfare throughout the administration. This is smart for them.”

In his Hanctimonious voice, Hannity complained that Common was “talking about killing cops.” So, cop killing, bad; Obama and Hillary killing, good?

Hannity jumped at the opening. “If this was somebody that used the same type of rhetoric about violence against President Obama, I would be against it (unless it was Ted Nugent)… This is inappropriate for a president and he goes back to his radical roots again and again and again, Ayers, Wright, Pfleger.”

Next up, Karl Rove – that noted expert in rap music – on Common.

Hannity asked, “If you make a threat like that, being in song
or in poetry, wouldn’t the Secret Service take a little visit to your house?”

Not necessarily, said Rove, but he said, “This guy is a thug!” He later suggested that Common’s lyrics about Bush probably made Hillary Clinton feel bad because she voted for the war in Iraq. “Does Common think she should be offed?” Rove asked with hammy outrage.

Speaking of hanging around with people talking about assassinating the president, Rove and Hannity might want to check out those readers at Fox Nation – where talking about killing Obama is commonplace – as well as others such as Al Gore, Rep. Jim McDermott and Planned Parenthood workers. Or are those comments OK because they’re not cops but Democrats and their allies?

Although listening to Hannity try to read rap lyrics was almost worth listening to the segments, the hypocrisy was just sickening.

The Daily Show’s take on this nonsense.