Hannity's Bluff Called

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here."

-Claude Rains' Captain Renault to Humphrey Bogart's Rick in Casablanca, 1942

So Wanda Sykes does stand-up (video below) at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner and people are shocked, shocked that she delivered tasteless jokes. Washington, meet Hollywood: the mores are a little different out there. On Limbaugh:

Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy, Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So, you're saying "I hope America fails," it's like, I don't care about people losing their homes, or their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that's treason. He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, Sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on oxycontin he missed his flight.
Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how 'bout that? Needs a little waterboarding, that's what he needs.

There was something to offend everyone: equating Rush Limbaugh with hijackers; reminding the public Rush was a drug addict; wishing death upon Limbaugh; and in the case of Keith Olbermann and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, simply referring to September 11 in a joke not about September 11.

Bad taste aside, don't get caught up in the shell game: watching the Limbaugh stuff and ignoring the Hannity reference. (To his credit, and unsurprisingly, Olbermann had it right: criticize Sykes, then go on to the Hannity issue.)

It now has been 21 days since Charles Grodin bluffed (video way below) Sean Hannity, on the latter's GOP TV program, into agreeing to be waterboarded for "the troops' families." It now has been 20 days since Keith Olbermann, rightly scolding Hannity for "trivializing" torture for a "stunt," on MSNBC's Countdown upped the ante by offering (video way, way, below) to donate $1,000 for each second that Hannity would endure the waterboarding (and to double that if Sean then would admit that he feared for his life and that waterboarding is torture).

And now it has been four days Sykes joked:

Sean Hannity, Sean Hannity said he's going to get waterboarded for charity, for our armed forces. He hasn't done it yet, I see. You know, talking about how he can take a waterboarding. Please. Okay, he can take a waterboarding by someone you know and trust, but let somebody from Pakistan waterboard, or Keith Olbermann. Let Keith Olbermann waterboard him. He can't take a waterboarding. I can break Sean Hannity just by giving him a middle seat in coach.

The Olbermann line was funny, though Keith shouldn't, couldn't, and wouldn't be the one doing the torture. It would be done under controlled conditions, in front of news cameras by someone trained in the technique, and probably particularly careful about not applying excessive force or pain. And for charity, apparently one of Repub Hannity's choosing. And yet, Sean Hannity, like (probably) you and like me, apparently won't do it, even though he is exposed as an all talk, no action kind of guy the longer he avoids it.

But this even is instructive not only for what it tells us of the Republican right's darlings, the talk show host with the third largest audience in the nation. A lot of torture's defenders, such as Republican party head Rush Limbaugh, still won't admit waterboarding is torture. The dishonesty and fright of some of the nation's leading Republicans on this issue is fascinating, and nowhere clearer than in the case of syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, who admits here that waterboarding is torture, then tells Dennis Miller he never believed it is torture.

Obviously, the main argument of the right, figuring that an appeal to fear is more compelling than reason, is that torture is the only thing standing between the U.S.A. and a terrorist attack. And Sean Hannity, unwittingly, has done his bit to demonstrate that perhaps the most notorious of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" is not the laughing matter he wants the public to believe it is.