What was Hannity's crime this time?
Well, the Fox News personality actually apologized to Stewart for a mistake that was made in a "Hannity" segment aired last week and "reported" by "The Daily Show" host on his program Tuesday.
Rather than graciously accepting Hannity's apology, Stewart attacked him with a segment that included a "young," 22-year old producer -- having aged 50 to 60 years watching "Hannity" the last five months -- asking Stewart to kill him so he wouldn't have to watch any more (video embedded below the fold with transcript):
JON STEWART: It wasn't actually me or my writers who watched your show and caught that slip up. It was actually one of our younger producers, a kid right out of school named Ramin Hediyati. And we're very proud of him, and I just wanted to give him the credit for catching that. Ramin, come on out here and take a bow, will you? Ladies and gentlemen, Ramin Hediyati. He's the one who caught that on there. We're delighted that he did it. Ramin, thanks for being here. Ramin, obviously you haven't been here that long. When did you graduate from college?
OLD MAN PLAYING RAMIN HEDIYATI: Last June.
STEWART: Right. And that makes you -- you're 23 years old?
HEDIYATI: I will be 23 next month.
STEWART: Great. Now you've been watching "Hannity" for us every night now for five months.
HEDIYATI: Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
STEWART: Well, we, appreciate you taking the time to do that for us. It was a great catch. And --
HEDIYATI: Kill me!
[ Laughter ]
STEWART: I'm sorry?
HEDIYATI: Kill me!
[ Laughter ]
STEWART: Ramin, I'm sorry but this is your job and it's a tough job and we appreciate it --
HEDIYATI: Be a man and get me out of here.
[ Laughter ]
STEWART: Ramin Hediyati, everybody. Thank you so much.
So that readers can fully grasp the stupidity at play here, last week "Hannity" aired a segment discussing Thursday's healthcare reform protest on Capitol Hill.
On Tuesday, Stewart demonstrated that clips of the September 12 rally in Washington, D.C., were co-mingled with videos of the November 5 event to make it look like last Thursday's rally was far-better attended than it was.
In Stewart's castigation of this error, he made it seem as if Hannity was personally responsible for it even though it's much more than likely that the clips were added from the September 12 rally without Hannity's knowledge.
Regardless, Hannity quickly apologized in his very next program:
I guess in Stewart's world what he did in response Thursday was a gracious way to accept an apology from someone in his own industry.
More importantly, it showed what Stewart did on Tuesday was far from either comedy or media analysis, but instead a clear extension of his own anti-Fox agenda.
After all, if this wasn't the case, he would have just accepted Hannity's apology and moved on. By continuing with the attacks even after the apology shows the goal is the antagonism itself and not correcting a mistake he and his team uncovered.
If Stewart wants to prove this assessment false, he should go after what Dylan Ratigan did Friday morning when the new MSNBCer presented doctored, sexy pictures of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on the air.
Of course, NewsBusters is not advising readers hold their breath waiting for Stewart to castigate Ratigan in close to the fashion he did Hannity.
In fact, we'll be quite surprised if "The Daily Show" host even notices Ratigan's transgression regardless of it being FAR worse than what occurred on "Hannity" last week.
That said, for those that can stomach it, here's Thursday's entire segment:
