Friday, May 9, 2014

Sean Hannity: Blood on his hands?

 Fox news and conservative talk radio giant Sean Hannity is taken to task by The Week's Elizabeth Stoker, who finds Hannity's uncomfortable defense of "stand your ground" shooters like George Zimmerman, Byron Smith, etc. ironic when juxtaposed with his views of the sanctity of life i.e. his views on abortion.

The victims in the Zimmerman, Smith shootings as well as the Markus Kaarma case in Montana where its been learned a 17 year old boy had essentially been lured toward Kaarma's garage with a purse left in plain sight in the rear of the of the open garage, according to his girlfriend, in statements to police.

Read her article here: Sean Hannity's Culture of Death...

Is Stoker treating Hannity fairly? I've written about Hannity before herehere, here and here. Its no secret I think he's a highly skilled money-machine in his industry, with scant evidence of anything approaching a soul.

Please read the Stoker article and weigh in...

Sources:

http://theweek.com/article/index/261184/sean-hannitys-culture-of-death

http://www.examiner.com/article/sean-hannity-defends-george-zimmerman-s-inconsistencies-with-a-bad-memory

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/01/hannity-defends-vigilante-killer/199112

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27243115

4 comments:

  1. I think we are being too generic trying to lump stand your ground laws together with castle doctrine laws, though an extension of one another the cases and premises are quite distinct. I see how they can blend together if your prose is just to show that guns are bad.

    Taking out all of the non pertinent details designed to appeal to emotion you have the following :

    Zimmerman case was stand your ground where an individual who saw another acting strangely near homes with previous robberies followed the individual and was then attacked, in the process of defending himself he shot the attacker.

    You can argue over specifics like whether he had a real fear of danger or is someone following you cause to attack them, or if following someone constitutes starting a confrontation, but they are all subjective. The bottom line question then is "should you be able to use potentially lethal force to stop someone who has attacked you".

    The smith case objective details are he shot 2 people that broke into his home for the purpose of theft.

    Subjectively you can get upset because they were young, or female, or how many times he shot them, but the bottom line question is "should you be able to use force to stop someone who has broken into your home for the purpose of a felony?".

    The most recent case is similar to the Smith case in that they are both castle doctrine, but with the interesting addition that the shooter had reasonable foreknowledge that he would be victimized, therefore he had additional options.

    He seems to have known he was not in danger, and that his home and family are not in danger, which theoretically opens up options for him including lethal ones, yet he premeditated violent force as the only solution.

    I have heard that it is bad he lured the person, but I don't buy that. If the individual he shot was not a criminal a lure would not have worked. In many peaceful areas of the country you can leave your front door unlocked and open and be confident your neighbor won't walk in and steal your stuff. It is never the victim of robberies fault if they get victimized even if they had items that tempted someone... That is the same logic people use when they say a woman deserved to be trapped because she dressed proactively.

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  2. The other question we should wonder about is, with all these recent events, are thieves going to be less likely to break into a home, or someone followed be willing to jump to a fight instead of run away, or parents going to do a better job keeping track of their law breaking teens?

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  3. Nonetheless, the fundamental error in this attack on Hannity (and believe me it pains me to defend him) is that the sanctity of life belief regarding abortion is not a broad sanctity of life, it is in the eyes of conservatives a sanctity of innocent life.



    You protect the unborn because you don't feel they did anything to deserve it (the mistake they make is that the unborn are not people, but whatever).

    You accept the consequences of someone engaged in a crime because they knowingly engaged in a behavior they should not have.

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  4. Zimmerman was told by a law enforcement official to break off his pursuit and leave the kid alone. He did not, and now we have a dead kid on our hands. I don't find anyone defending the other victims behaviors but again we have some dead young people. In terms of our young people learning from the older ones, it seems the lesson has changed from be prudent, avoid danger when you can, don't invite trouble to a "let's get it on" mentality.

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