You just have to love the total and unwavering hypocrisy of Sean Hannity. And by “just have to love,” I mean, absolutely loathe. How much can one guy say one thing and do another? Does this guy know how to do anything but lie with a straight face, while looking you directly in the eye? It just kills me how anyone can think this guy has even a shred of credibility and integrity.

Last week, Sean was all over Charlie Gibson about his Sarah Palin interview on ABC. He said the questions were mostly fair game, but that Charlie had grilled Palin to the gills in a way he never had before. Sean devoted a good ten minutes to this outrage, and noted that he had gone back and looked at every single one of Charlie Gibson’s previous interviews and said that none of them were as confrontational as the one with Palin.

He said grilling her was fine, as long as he was this confrontational with all his interviews. What he really hated was the difference in tone between “all those other Gibson interviews” and the one with Palin. Then Sean went on to say that when HE interviews people, they all get the same treatment.

Oh yeah?

I’ll bet at that moment, he didn’t know he’d get an interview with Sarah Palin.

Let’s take a look at how he treats some of his liberal guests on the Sean Hannity show (a.k.a., Hannity and Colmes) on the FAUX News channel. Here’s a little video where Sean interviews Robert Kuttner, co-founder and current editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, a generally liberal magazine.

Of course, that’s Sean having a total meltdown on a liberal guest, but you and I both know that all he does with his liberal guests is attack, attack, and attack some more. Then he tries to get them to answer a nuanced question with a yes or no.

So if we took Sean at his word, we’d expect that he’d be just as confrontational with Sarah Palin, right? I mean, he’d ask her the really tough questions!

Well, if you dare, check out what he actually asked of Palin (links open up in a new window):

Palin/Hannity Part 1
Palin/Hannity Part 2
Palin/Hannity Part 3

Seems kind of like a Sarah Palin GOP advertisement, doesn’t it? I mean check out these hardball questions:

• Is Senator Obama then using what happened on Wall Street this week? Is he using it for political gain?
• The average citizen — if I was a resident of Alaska, you would write me a check every year for $2,069?
• Senator Obama on the campaign trail — and Senator Biden as well — they often criticize John McCain, that, well his plan is — he’s going to continue the policies of tax cuts for the wealthy. For those that maybe buy into that class warfare agreement or think, why shouldn’t the rich pay more? My question to you is the converse: why does everyone benefit if the rich pay less or if everybody pays less in taxes? Why is that good for the economy?
• There’s this — you know, you still have a very high approval rating, but there are people that still weren’t happy about it. How did you take on your own party, specifically? And do you think you’d be able to do that, as well, in Washington?
• Well, let me ask you, Americans have heard, for example, a lot of information, false information, misinformation or incorrect information on ANWR … You know, why then why then would you support drilling in Alaska? Why would that be a good thing? Why would you want to do that?
• And what is the impact for Americans down the road if we don’t do something to solve our energy dependence?
  

And that was only part one! I mean, wow. Really tough questions. Hey Sean, what the hell happened to your “ideology” from just one week ago that said you treat all interview subjects the same?

This guy is pure, unadulterated scum, who lets his party’s VP candidate basically go on air and repeat all the talking points of the campaign without any challenge, any intelligent inquiry. Nice going, Sean. I don’t even want to hear you talking about bias in media again, OK?

The outright boldness of his hypocrisy just stuns me.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish covered the Hannity interview and caught Palin in yet another lie. These folks lie so easily and so pathologically, don’t they? I mean, Palin’s now even making up stories about how she told her children she was going to be nominated (or was nominated, depending on which of her accounts you believe) for McCain’s VP slot. Just amazing. I continue to be stunned by the audacity of it all.