Ms. Sean Hannity

(Oh, there you are.)

As this election cycle draws to its inevitable conclusion, mercifully, one American thing has already changed. In a bipartisan fashion the public has finally learned to mistrust the media.

While this has long been a conservative pet peeve, only in the past few years has the news industry (along with the remoratti of prognosticators and pontificators) truly earned such a jaded filter. From the Iraq war on, the for-profit media's flaws have been clear and multi-faceted.

Forget the ink and paper; everyone else has. Network news has become Sesame Street for adults. The cable channels are something more akin to propaganda instruments. Talk-radio is strictly the stuff of P.T. Barnum. Even National Public Radio has become infected with corporate sponsorship.

Clearly, since you're reading this, you take your chances in cyberspace, but how reliable can that be? On our watch, and at our peril, the Fourth Estate has become predictable and pedestrian. The forest is the trees.

Strangely enough, all of this brings us to Sean Hannity, for there is no better personification of the schmaltz that passes for modern media. Pick your poison - television, radio, print, Internet - it's hard to avoid tripping over the famed broadcaster and ventriloquist.

A better cheerleader than Dubya ever was, he has relentlessly deified the inexplicable Sarah Palin, far beyond the point of suspicion about any mere crush. It obviously goes much deeper than that. You can see it glittering in those dewy gerbil eyes of his.

Simply put, Sean Hannity is Sarah Palin trapped in a man's body. When he looks at her, he's gazing into his own internal vanity mirror. It would complete him if only he could be that hockey mom.

As much as this man has accomplished in the world of jaundice journalism, he still has a dream. He'd give more than his left nut to be the ruler of a petro-state, never mind having the chance to sit in Dick Cheney's chair wearing a skirt. Being Sarah Palin would make Sean Hannity the lord and master of his own fecund womb.

It would also mean more time spent with the hairdresser and makeup artist, and less on the waxing table, and would provide a built-in excuse for those angry spells (s)he seems to have every month. Best of all, (s)he'd get to actually screw a Union steel worker, ever' night.

Their mutual confusions about scripture and the Constitution could dance like angels on their pin of a head. Sean might not make her any smarter, but (s)he would relish the potential for an exchange of talking points with someone in real power, if only at the RNC.

This is all just fantasy to Americans who want to believe that there might be a change in the course that conservatives have beset upon the nation. In the end, whatever happens to the rest of us, Sean Hannity will be left with the same treasures - money, overexposure, political futility...

And still, perhaps, a dream.

pH 1o.11.o8