Radio and television talk show host Sean Hannity took time during his TV program on Tuesday to comment on remarks from critically acclaimed musician Ryan Adams, who tweeted earlier in the week: ".@SeanHannity Your entire soul is controlled by fear and by hate. Evolve little chicken man. See reality.”
Hannity was in the middle of a discussion focusing on putting role models (i.e. Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong) on a pedestal, but he changed topics to take aim at Adams (see video): “He is the latest liberal entertainer to launch an outrageous Twitter tirade against yours truly," said the conservative entertainer. "Singer-songwriter—by the way, you probably don’t know him, he’s not that popular—Ryan Adams … We reached out to Mr. Adams, we invited him on the show for a comment. His little agent replied—because he was too chicken—in an email: ‘Ryan’s statement is his tweet and vice versa.'" Hannity continued, addressing Adams directly: "Why don’t you have the courage to come on the show and defend yourself? He called me a ‘terrorist’ … If we wanted to torture terrorists, we could play his music, which isn’t that popular anyway… Come on the program, stop being a wimp, he’s hiding behind his rock star makeup like the gutless little coward that he is.”
As first reported by Consequence of Sound, the talk show host then proceeded to open the topic for discussion with a panel that included Miss Oklahoma Anne-Marie Costello, who said: “He’s nearly a 40 year old man, 40 is the new 15 … The problem with having a Twitter is you can say whatever you want without having any kind of accountability ... He has no sense of integrity," the recently crowed pageant champ concluded, based on Adams' tweet, before offering that she believes she is a good role model because she "didn't achieve my talent by insulting people. I have a sense of character and integrity, as everyone should."
Ironically, Hannity tweeted on Tuesday that Adams was resorting to "zero substance, all name-calling." But on his own Fox News program, however, the entertainer/host pretty much offered up the same. Ultimately, the argument was probably better left on Twitter than receiving an entire segment of airtime, considering Hannity himself acknowledged most of his older-skewing audience may not be familiar with Adams.
UPDATE (08.09.13, 6:05 p.m. EST): The woman chatting it up with Hannity as "Miss Oklahoma" is not Miss Oklahoma at all. The real Miss Oklahoma 2013 is 20-year-old Kelsey Griswold, a student at Oklahoma City University. There's also a Miss Oklahoma USA, part of the Donald Trump-owned Miss USA competition, which is a sleazier, second-rate event that focuses more on beauty over brains. But Costello isn't even part of that group. She's Miss Oklahoma United States, a bush-league pageant that isn't even nationwide. Her sister, Caitlin, is Miss Teen Oklahoma United States, so it's clearly a very elite establishment. Now it makes sense why we couldn't get past Costello's bratty, somewhat oblivious demeanor during this segment. Of course, Fox News still proudly credits her as "Miss Oklahoma."