Tuesday, October 07, 2008

This Is What You Call a "Drive-By"   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Last night I gave a talk in Manhattan about Obama and Catholics. Afterward, a number of people came up to me and told me that they can't believe how much they are just learning about Obama. I had talked in detail about his abortion record, which they found helpful. And many — to the point you would have thought he had been the opening act (as if) — mentioned that they found Sean Hannity's show over the weekend on Obama's ties to radicalism revealing.

This morning, the New York Times tries to discredit Sean's show:

During a weekend of Republican attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s personal associations, Fox News Channel ran a program Sunday that made provocative assertions about similar connections, called “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism.”

Sean Hannity, the conservative radio and television host, was the host of the hourlong program, which raised, among other things, unsubstantiated accusations that Mr. Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago was “training for a radical overthrow of the government.”

The statement came from Andy Martin, a conservative writer and frequent political candidate who is credited as being among the first — if not the first — to assert in a chain e-mail message that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim.

Mr. Obama is a Christian; his campaign says he “is not, was not and has never been” a Muslim.

Peppering his statements with phrases like “in my opinion” and “my view is,” Mr. Martin said Mr. Obama’s political career had been engineered by Bill Ayers, a founder and former member of the radical Weather Underground and now an education professor in Chicago.

Well, the Gray Lady doesn't have to take that source's word for it. Stanley Kurtz can tell you plenty about Bill Ayers. He's done the legwork. (And continues to.) And I'm pretty certain he's never sent a chain e-mail.

Sean's been doing the work the mainstream media won't do on Obama for long over a year now — highlighting how radical like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers have played a formative role in his life. Now that it's a close election, that makes Sean a threat to the favored one. And so they try to discredit his work. Fortunately for America, Hannity's voice carries.

10/07 10:52 AMShare