By Eric Wilson

I figured American Shithole would be getting on in years, winding down a bit, perhaps even phoning it in a little before there’d be good cause to feature Sean Hannity.

What a week!

I really thought the FOX News stalwart would be one of the last to fall; one of the last die-hard loyalists in the final days of the Trump presidency; an end of the road off-ramp, not an early speed bump. Perhaps we are farther along down the road than it seems.

He may stick around for the long-haul — I think that depends though, on what we learn in the coming months about his relationship with Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen. Either way, his dealings with the embattled lawyer are going to be the focus of much speculation.

All I know is, I looked outside my window Monday afternoon, and it was a sunny spring day, the sky had not yet fallen, and the world was more or less intact. Then I turned on CNN. It was still a beautiful day; immediately made all the more beatific, as Sean Hannity’s universe was suddenly shat upon by life’s equivalent of an elephant anus to the face, at point blank range.

The imagery is appropriate, as in the end, it will be the republicans that crap all over him.

Welcome to the Shithole, Hannity! You duplicitous, dimwitted, wrinkled ballsack of a man.

FOX News announced — mere hours after the “3rd client” story broke — that while corporate was unaware of any relationship between Hannity and Cohen, he continues to have its full support; so Hannity as expected, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Are you fucking kidding me, FOX News?

How can you justify zero action for an anchor that has misled your organization and the American people in such a manner? This speaks to the nature of the relationships he had with the very subjects of his news reporting, and on the presidency itself — destroying any remaining credibility you might have had with moderates and independents.

Literally no other news organization in America would stand behind an employee under similar circumstances — but FOX News is not a news organization; we all know this. Some of us have always known. FOX News is a propaganda machine and they have been since day one. Hannity has been their Minister of Disinformation for quite some time now.

Earlier this week, as the story surrounding Sean Hannity and Cohen began to unfold, and after realizing nothing was going to happen to Hannity anytime soon, out of boredom I let my mind wander off to a darker future:

I imagined a time — many decades from now — my dismal, final days as a member of one of the last pockets of resistance in America still struggling to protect the routed remnants of the insurgency.

Surrounded by jerry-rigged technology, a filthy mattress, and my only companion — an emaciated, three-legged dog named Lucky — I struggle to keep the tattered forces of the rebellion alive.

“You’re a good boy, Lucky, here’s a treat,” I’d say, before tossing him a child’s femur I’d found in the rubble that was once a public school. 

Fueled by anger alone, with arthritic fingers punching furiously away at the keys, holed up in some leaking shanty, post-apocalyptic dystopian shithole — not unlike many of my Chicago apartments in the 20th century — I raced against time, with a battalion of dickless jackboots hell-bent on destroying the last vestiges of American democracy, always closing in on my location.

Then came the news.

Suddenly, the funeral procession for the Reichsminister für Propaganda, Sean Patrick Hannity, appeared on the holo-feed that I’d illegally jacked from TRUMP Corp.’s encrypted data sphere — the 99% were prohibited by law to access information of any kind from America’s sole remaining conglomerate.

(Look at me with my nifty sci-fi world-building! Take note, Hollywood! Cue the tense music.) 

In an effort to keep the last of our freedom fighters hidden from Emperor Trumpborg and his mindless evangelical thought police, I’d have to keep my data interloping short — they were tracking me — but long enough to find out just how Hannity had died. I had to know…

The holo-feed news ticker scrolling by in midair read: HANNITY DEAD AT 96. Trumpborg agents reported the death was due to complications from repeated exposure to a mutated strain of super-super-super-gonorrhea.

Lucky and I would share a quiet, knowing glance — we always knew the 3rd Client was a dirty slut. Not that I would judge him for that. Then Lucky would die and I would be forced to eat him, because that is what happens in the post-apocalyptic hellscape we are heading for, you fucking ignorant Trump-supporting swine! Wake up!

Wake up!

Stirring from my fevered daydream, I snapped out of my funk just as two healthy dogs were gently nudging me to attend to their needs. Not to eat them, but to feed them, scratch them, play with them, and let them outside. The sky was still a breathtaking azure blue.

I instructed Cole and Stella as they raced into the backyard to be thankful that we are still in the early stages of this administration, as I can make a gourmet meal out of simply anything.

Take note potential suitors, I am single, and I can cook.

If this piece had audio effects, you would hear from me now, a long, exasperated sigh.

I fucking hate Sean Hannity.

I mean, there are a bunch of people in this country involved with this administration and working their evil elsewhere, that I truly despise…

…but I fucking hate Sean Hannity.

The Hannitys, Limbaughs, Becks, and Jones’ of the world have always been a sore spot for me. The sorest of spots. The propagandists. The shit-stirrers. The Goebbels ilk throughout history. They service their own narcissism and faux ideology perfectly, by being the faces and mouthpieces for the worst instincts and behaviors of humanity, spewing the venom and bile of nationalist authoritarianism — all manner of sensationalist lies wrapped in a flag, delivered from bully pulpits with bibles and bullets — and they have been whipping up the fearful, the faithful, and the feeble-minded into a fever pitch for centuries.

I think instead of continuing to insult Mr. Hannity, I would like to speculate briefly on what I would prefer his dealings with disgraced attorney Michael Cohen to reveal. We won’t know for quite some time, so I don’t see the harm in a little rumination.

If I had my druthers, I suppose I would like Hannity to have paid Cohen hush money to conceal from the public that he is actually Slenderman, and he likes to lure small children into the woods.

Something like that, or worse. The kind of secret that drives a monster like Hannity to tape a sobbing confession before drowning himself in a bathtub filled with Russian prostitute urine. I mean, if it were up to me…

Hey, what if the Russia tape is just Hannity peeing on Trump? Just a thought.

What I wanted to write about this week was coping, or more specifically, how we are all trying to cope with this administration in different ways. At least how I have been coping when my friend has to go on out-of-state trips, and I get left alone worrying all the time about bad shit happening that I can’t control.

Every week I have a column lined up about the things that connect us, the common bonds that bring us together, and every week I scrap it, because there are at least three total assholes dominating the airwaves that I must address instead.

It’s a sea of assholes out there. Every direction I turn, more asshole! All of this plays into my slightly-heightened general anxiety default setting — revving me up, making me twitchy.

So I am more nervous than usual these days, when my friend with whom I live, travels the world.  

I thought I’d share a few of the typical exchanges I have with Ari every time she leaves town — because the anxiety I experience not being able to be there to troubleshoot for her drives me batty. Which is odd, because I am fully aware how absolutely useless I would be for her abroad — as it’s the same amount of useless I am at home.

I mean, what am I going to do if she's attacked by a mob of unruly dental hygienists at one of these conventions? Limp away? Cripple them to death? Shake my cane and tell those kids to get off my lawn, and my roommate? I wasn’t much of a badass before my legs were for-shit, now I’m just a wobbly punching bag in baggy house pants, who half the time looks like some sort of homeless pirate.

But that’s a story for another day.

Ari and I are 21st century besties, which is bad enough; I can’t imagine what a neurotic fuck I would be sending a life partner out into this world. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it must be like for the spouses and families of our military, every time they ship off to a warzone.

I was mildly anxious before this administration, and now that I am sober and dealing with a physical disability, I don’t have my crutches either. Well, I guess in this case I do have my crutches; they are just literally crutches now. But I can’t drink the night away, or run myself up and down the court with a bunch of cocky teenagers and twenty-somethings that never fucking tire, just to get away from, or work through my anxiety.

“You look beat; you wanna play half-court, old man?”

“I hope you get rickets, kid.” I’d exhale, doubled-over and out of breath.

“What’s rickets, old-timer?”

I don’t have basketball or booze anymore to block out the noise. What coping mechanisms have you found to be effective, dear reader?

I find schadenfreude to be an effective mood enhancer. It’s not often, when knee-deep in this cesspool of misery and suffering, that we get to briefly note the beginning of the end for one of the turds floating by.

This is the beginning of the end for Hannity, that bloviating, arch-conservative, shitgibbon-suckling charlatan — and he’s such a fucking dick. His grossest instincts on display over the Seth Rich debacle should have cost him his career last year; thank the heavens the Rich family has the courage to sue him. I hope they take Hannity and FOX News for every cent they can get.

When I look at Hannity’s face, I get that involuntary butt-pucker and eye twitch typically reserved for horrible experiences — like a colonoscopy, or an encounter with a large group of unruly American teenagers loose in the wild. Seeing his barely-contained fear and discomfort has gone a long way to soothing my nerves.

I think I felt like Stephen Colbert when the news broke about Hannity being Michael Cohen’s secret client — without the booze, of course.

Mostly though, I just feel lonely and anxious this week because my good friend is out on the road, and with the road being the dangerous place that it is these days, I find it hard to focus on assholes in D.C. or the assholes at FOX News.

My writing and my sense of humor are my coping mechanisms now, but honestly, they are weak substitutes for a stiff scotch, an embarrassing performance on the neighborhood basketball court, or best of all, the company of a good friend.

Also, miserable Sean Hannity. It’s like a pint of Ben and Jerry’s after midnight. 

Go love on your pets, and give your loved humans a hug.

Hang in there, dad.

B.S. Report  

The one-man wrecking machine, David Hogg, turned 18 this past week, and he shows no signs of slowing down in the Terrifying Rich Assholes department. Setting his sights on the whales of the gun world, Boss Hogg is calling for a boycott of BlackRock and Vanguard, two of the biggest investors in gun manufacturers.

As Bill Hicks would probably say, you're gonna need a bigger pair of pants for that enormous set of balls you got on you, kid. Excuse me, man.