Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Monday mocked Brian Stelter’s legs after the CNN chief media correspondent filmed himself sans pants during a reporting segment.
The video: Carlson commented on a photo of Stelter without pants while handing off his top-rated show to Hannity.
- “Okay, now you just traumatized me with Humpty Dumpty, and I’m going to have that image seared into my memory for the rest of my life,” Hannity said, referring to Stelter. “Did you have to ruin my life? That is traumatic.”
Why wasn’t Stelter wearing pants? On Sunday, Stelter devoted a segment of his “Reliable Sources” program to suggesting that one of the pandemic’s effects on media coverage had been to make corporate media journalists relatable.
- Lockdown orders and other coronavirus prevention measures have sometimes forced cable news talking heads and reporters to broadcast from in-home studios, occasionally pantsless.
- “Embarrassing moments are humanizing moments,” the CNN host said after playing a viral clip of ABC News correspondent Will Reeve appearing on “Good Morning America” without pants in April.
- Stelter then rolled footage which showed him not wearing any pants during a CNN appearance in January to discuss former President Donald Trump being banned from Twitter.
Background: Stelter, referred to derisively by critics as the media’s “hall monitor,” has been engaged in a long-running feud with rival cable news host Hannity.
- On the right, Stelter is widely mocked as an effete liberal pundit trying desperately to be taken seriously as a hard-hitting journalist.
- This has led conservative commentators to compare Stelter to “George Constanza,” a sad-sack main character from the iconic ’90s sitcom “Seinfeld.”
- Hannity has preferred to refer to his counterpart by the name of a different fictional character: Humpty Dumpty, the anthropomorphic egg of English legend.
