Stephen A. Smith Showed Sean Hannity What a Real TV Man Looks Like
Photo via Screenshot of Fox News
Sean Hannity is an amateur. A charlatan. A weak baby locked in his safe space boxing with ghosts of his own imagination and winning every round on his own scorecard 10-7. The animating principle of conservative media is the weakness underlying their whining (although if the Department of Justice and the Canadian Prime Minister are right, maybe collecting Kremlin money too), and every time it comes into contact with the real world, they get exposed for the weak cult followers they prove themselves to be.
Stephen A. Smith, defending multi-year champion of every gasbag TV and radio sports talk show in history, went on Sean Hannity last night, proving that there is a fundamental difference between a man on TV and a TV Man. Hannity has been taking a beating in the meme wars today, and Stephen A. Smith decided to spike the football this morning.
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) October 25, 2024
Stephen A. Smith’s politics have always been a little amorphous, but suffice it to say he wouldn’t be caught dead reading Splinter. His beliefs exist somewhere near the center, and his friendship with Sean Hannity gives you an idea of how sympathetic he is to right-wing politics. There are countless idiotic racists on the right today who no-doubt are portraying this unfair fight as yet another Marxist Black Democrat who works for woke ESPN trying to ruin the good name of a white man, but I’d bet these two have played golf together more times than they have cumulatively voted Democrat.
Clips have been floating around online, but it’s really worth watching this entire interview.
“I feel bad for you half the time with some of the takes you give, but I’m here to help you out anyway.”
Stephen A. had this fight won before it began. Getting that jab in and then retreating to his deep bag of facial expressions designed to make Hannity look like the idiotic boob he has proven to be provided the “too-long, didn’t watch” summary of the next several minutes. Hannity’s first question demonstrated how out of his league he is here, as he served up a typical Fox News distortion of reality, accusing Stacey Abrams of saying and implying things she did not.
While there are an endless array of bumbling Democratic politicians and credulous bothsides media idiots willing to trip over themselves to make Fox News’ lies legitimate, Stephen A. is battle hardened by thousands of calls from Jimmy from Norristown saying Donovan McNabb just can’t cut it at quarterback and Mike from Queens perpetually thinking the Knicks are one more good rotation player away from a championship. Skip Bayless has thrown every braindead deceptive TV debate strategy at him in existence. There is nothing that can phase Stephen A. at this point, and he casually dismissed Hannity’s lie and began correctly recapping Abrams’ appeal to Black men to vote for Kamala Harris in the same cadence, tone and confident self-righteousness as when Kendrick Perkins tells him that Jalen Brunson is overrated.
Forget about the content or facts of what each man is saying and just look at how they say it. Television is an entertainment medium, no matter how much TV news wants to dress it up as something more, and Stephen A. understands that better than anyone who has ever been on TV. There are thousands of other channels and millions of other streaming options people can flip to at a moment’s notice, and you must keep viewers engaged from second to second if you are to win the war for ratings in the era of fragmentation. Smith’s range of voices to express various emotions could all be characters in their own animated movie, and he just bludgeons the monotone, self-serious and low energy Sean Hannity for eight minutes with his immense rhetorical talents that highlight the absurdity of what Hannity is asserting in a way that a sober, direct deconstruction of them on TV never could.
The most viral moment of this interview that today’s meme champion framed on his digital mantle opened with Stephen A. eviscerating Hannity as a TV show host. After a question filled with bullshit that seemingly took up an entire commercial block’s worth of time, Stephen A. responded, “Well first of all, that’s a very long question.” This succinct jab both downplays the substance and the optics of the slop that just fell out of Hannity’s mouth, and given the chumminess throughout the interview, this segment could reasonably be interpreted as one friend trying to teach the other how to really do TV.
Stephen A. Smith to Hannity: “I know you’re not talking about someone being lucid and cogent and enunciating their thoughts with clarity and you’re bragging about Donald Trump. We can’t be watching the same stuff if that’s what you’re doing!” pic.twitter.com/PY0MfjJTs5
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2024
You know how you can know for certain that Sean Hannity lost this exchange?
He stopped talking first and had to gather his thoughts for a moment. That’s when Smith smirked and went into meme mode to run up the score.
This is the immense power of Stephen A. Smith, Television Man. Many have tried to match him word for word. All have failed. Now he’s doing victory laps on Fox News for fun while he hosts a podcast about whatever he wants and gets paid a bajillion dollars by ESPN to show up for their NBA coverage, First Take and whenever else he feels like it. This interview is like watching me trying to tackle Derrick Henry. It almost makes you feel bad for Sean Hannity before the long-term memory center in your brain kicks in to remind you of how much he deserves this kind of public flogging.