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Sean Hannity

c/o Fox News

1211 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10036





Dear Mr. Hannity,


I know this is a big week for you, what with your new show debuting. I'm sure I speak for a large swath of the population when I say how relieved I am that you finally went solo. I may have agreed with Colmes when it came to politics, but he was dragging the production down.



I guess I should start at the beginning. I was a guest on your show a couple of years back. I know you have a lot of guests, so I'm posting this link as a refresher.

You can skip ahead to the 2:00 mark, where our interview starts. (And please ignore the title. I don't know how to post stuff to YouTube, so I had to ask my cousin Gary for help, and this was his idea of a "joke." Ha-ha-ha.)

I realize it was probably just another day at the office for you. But for me (a non-pundit) it was a pretty bizarre experience. I was sitting in a studio outside Boston with an audio feed in my ear, staring at a piece of black cardboard. Suddenly, your voice was ringing inside my head. Your producers told me I'd be "on air" for at least ten minutes. But they pulled the plug after three. I imagine this had something to do with the veiled allusion I made to Bill O'Reilly's sexual-harassment lawsuit.



I've looked at the segment a few times since it aired (oh, all right, a few dozen times) and what's most disturbing is that, while I find your demeanor shrill and brutish, I also find it strangely. . . alluring.



I don't want this to come off the wrong way.

I'm a happily married man and, from what I understand, so are you. What's more, I find you, as a moral actor, repulsive.



But the chemistry of desire doesn't factor in morality. When it comes to pure animal magnetism I'm afraid to report that you've got my number. I've thought about this more than I'd care to admit. To be honest, it's kept me up a few nights. In my social milieu, admitting a secret attraction to Sean Hannity is about as louche as it gets. (I mean, I guess it could be worse — it could be Ann Coulter.)

My bromance has two equally disturbing components. First, your physical presence. Every time I watch our segment (okay, calling it "our segment" is already kind of creepy, isn't it?) I keep thinking: Why does this guy look so incredibly familiar to me? My first thought was Superman, the Man of Steel recast as a cable host. Then I thought, no, he's like the ruddy Irish guys who ran the hockey frat at my college. Finally it dawned on me: You look exactly like the brawny bully in those Charles Atlas ads that ran on the back cover of the comic books I read growing up. You've got the exact same black slab of hair, the broad shoulders, the big jaw, the sneering profile.



To a lot of folks, this kind of stylized he-man look is comic. But I grew up in a world of scrawny, swarthy Jews with weak chins and thinning hair. And not surprisingly, I grew into a scrawny, swarthy Jew with a weak chin and thinning hair. Sad as this may sound, Sean, you're my masculine ideal.



And I know I'm not alone in this feeling. After all, most of your viewers are men. Most of them would claim they watch your show because they want to stay informed. But let's be honest here: TV is a visual medium. It isn't what you say that matters most, but how you look saying it. You've perfected that rare combination: gravitas and beefcakeitas.

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