There is only the crap: An analysis of the Hannity model

Some 4 months after Bill Dedman at MSNBC and Michael Levenson of the Boston Globe reported on Hillary Clinton's senior thesis, Sean Hannity finally got around to terrorizing FOXNews viewers about the rabid Marxist revolutionary walking around in Hillary's pantsuit.

Volume up on the sense-of-dread music. Begin montage of incredibly unflattering photos of Clinton. Cue up the clip compilation of Clinton quotes so wrenched from context that such malicious editing should be considered a criminal act.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX HOST: Hillary Clinton's senior thesis has been locked up in the archives of Wellesley College for years and, until recently, never seen by the public. We have obtained a copy. In this week's "Clinton Chapters," we reveal what it says about her past, her politics and her values.

First off, the thesis—entitled "'There Is Only the Fight': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model"—has been available to the public for much longer than "until recently." It's been available for viewing at Wellesley College since 2001. And as early as January 2000, the late Barbara Olson, an infamous rightwing provocateur, said she had a copy.

What's more, while Hannity may have "obtained a copy" of Clinton's thesis, I'd swear on Reagan's grave that he has never read it. If anyone at FOXNews has actually read a copy of the typewritten, double-spaced, 92-page political science paper, I'm guessing it's one of the summer interns. And on her own time, too.

This is understandable: The man at the head of the Hannity Multimedia Empire simply doesn't have the time or inclination to read Saul Alinsky quotes and poli-sci mumbo jumbo. Just consider his demanding career: a nightly TV show, daily radio broadcasts, book writing and book tours, his Hannity's America series, personal appearances, and speeches, not to mention occasional novelty items such as his Keeping Christ in Christmas CD with Michael Medved.

Hannity has so egregiously borrowed—and without attribution—from the MSNBC and Boston Globe reports it's surprising both organizations didn't protest. The only things original to the FOXNews account are the unflattering photos and the falsely incriminating video clips. Then again, who would be naïve enough to expect anything else?

Despite the ominous music and the heavy breathing over falsely implied socialism/communism, it's pretty clear: There's no there there.

Think about it: If there is any smoking gun in Clinton's senior thesis, anything that could derail her campaign, how did Carl Bernstein (A Woman in Charge) as well as Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta (Her Way) miss it in their recent biographies?

More tellingly, Barbara Olson, author of the full-tilt hormonal Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, had a copy in January 2000 and she (and her proxies) never bothered to put it online!

Oh, right. The kind of people who engineered a presidential impeachment and who spitefully outed a covert CIA agent simply recoil in horror at the idea of violating the putative copyright protections of a nearly 40-year-old unpublished senior thesis. Sure. Whatever.
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Full disclosure: My senior thesis was "The Lucy-Ethel Paradigm: Depictions of Female Friendship in Post—World War II America." I would have ordered my thesis to remain sealed until after my death, but my brilliant observations already have been lost to posterity.

For the fun side of all of this, check out Hillary at Wellesley: Girls Gone Radical.