SALON

Monday, Aug 10, 2009 8:01 PM UTC

Town hall protesters are just like former Miss California

Sean Hannity goes to the person who'll really know what's up with healthcare town halls

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Topics: War Room, Carrie Prejean,

We can all learn something from former beauty queens. Like, say you want to talk about healthcare reform on national television. Who better to bring in than Carrie Prejean, the controversial former Miss California who lost her crown earlier this year? That’s what Fox News host Sean Hannity did on Friday.

In his defense, Hannity didn’t bring Prejean to ask for her thoughts on the relative merits of the public option versus a co-op system or even the dreaded single-payer. Instead, he compared her situation — she’s become a hero on the right for her answer on same-sex marriage at the Miss USA pageant, and conservatives believe the left attempted to silence her — to the controversy over protests at healthcare town halls.

It’s very interesting in one sense, you were almost like the first casualty in this battle of somebody speaks out in America today, oh, they want to jump all over you,” Hannity said. Later, he added, “Maybe this is a good lesson, because the people that — the Democrats are calling angry mobs like all these angry mobs are all around here. But maybe this will be an inspiration, because now there’s an effort to intimidate people at these town hall meetings and silence them. And maybe people can learn from your lesson.”

Now that’s service journalism.

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.

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