hell has frozen over, folks

If you saw The Daily Show last night, you saw Jon Stewart exposing the latest in pathetic Fox Noise hackery--in covering last week's Michelle Bachman loonfest tea-bagger rally on the Hill, Stewart and his team noticed that something looked very different in various clips:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Now, of course it's not news that Fox lies. What's news is that, hell has frozen over. Sean Hannity has actually apologized. Er, sorta:



What's funny to me is that even in admitting his producers cut in footage of the much larger rally back in September, Hannity still can't say they deliberately misled people. He has to play this 'mistakes were made' canard, a mistake which would be really hard to do--taking old footage and running it as new. And as Chez Pazienza said on HuffPost, Hannity managed to come off as '...both contrite and a smarmy little prick.'

What's more striking to me is that he didn't really apologize to his viewers, at least not for what he should really be sorry for: assuming they are idiots. That should be the first thing he says, you would think: 'Folks, sorry we assumed you were all pathetic sheep with no will of your own or ability to think critically about anything you see here. We assumed you are so stupid you would swallow anything we dangle in front of you.'

Of course, you'll never hear that from Hannity and his ilk; they are getting rich off of that assumption, and it has served them well for a long time.

ADDENDUM: the hannity vid seems to have been nuked, but here's a link to another version, for however long it lasts.