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Rall ‘ambushed’ on Hannity and Colmes

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Alan Gardner February 6, 2006 1 minute 2 comments

Ted Rall appeared on Hannity and Colmes on Friday night and according to his blog the show did not go as planned. He agreed to go TV on the condition that they not talk about his controversial cartoons. They did. Fox doesn’t provide transcripts of their shows, but below is purportedly the exchange between Hannity and Rall (as provided by Newsbusters blog:

SEAN HANNITY: Here’s what you’re missing. The reason that you have the right to be mean, and you were mean to this guy [killed in Afghanistan, former NFL star Pat] Tillman, who gave up a football contract to save his country. The reason you have the right to be mean in your cartoons, and Toles has a right to mean and insensitive in his cartoons, is because of people like this (Sean holds up the WaPo cartoon) that literally put their lives on the line so you have the right for free expression. And you insult them and use them as props so you can make your left-wing political points.

RALL: Sean, you could not possibly be more wrong about the nature of this country. We do not owe our liberties to the military. We owe them to the Constitution. We have civilian rule in the United States —

HANNITY: The military preserves the Constitution. They put their lives on the line so that you have free speech. You do owe them.

RALL: The military doesn’t give us free speech.

HANNITY: Yes, they do.

RALL: Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers gave us free speech.

HANNITY: No. Because if they don’t defend that Constitution, you don’t have the right to be so wrong in your cartoons!

The blogosphere lit up in reaction to the exchange. You can get a flavor (and links to the posts) by visiting this page of search results on Technorati.

UPDATE: Video of the exchange has been posted over at Crooks and Liars (Windows Media, and Quicktime)