Sometimes, Sean Hannity’s website is too much even for Sean Hannity.This week, the Fox News blowhard and enemy of civility was forced to delete a story about Barack Obama’s new portrait. The painting, commissioned by the Smithsonian and unveiled on Tuesday at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, created a buzz in political and art circles, mostly due to the painter’s untraditional composition and assault on expectations.Kehinde Wiley did not depict Obama in the Oval Office. He put him in an antique chair and then textured the seven-foot canvas with so many leaves and flowers, you half expected to find a pregnant Beyoncé lurking in the background.Some people loved the bold approach and reimagining of what a presidential portrait should be. Others found it tacky and un-presidential. But instead of contributing to this esthetic dialogue, Hannity staffers put on their tinfoil toques to investigate the possibility the portrait contained — wait for it — “Secret Sperm.”Take another look at the painting. See that vein on the left side of Obama’s head? Blow it up and look closely. That’s not a vein — it’s spermatozoa! There is ejaculate on Obama’s temple! Hence, the now-deleted headline on Hannity’s eponymous clearing house of hot takes that are not quite warm enough for Fox News: “PORTRAIT PERVERSION: Obama Portrait Features SECRET SPERM.”Now, why the artist would include clandestine semen on the former U.S. president’s head is not clear. But a decade ago, in a New York Times profile, Wiley said some of his background patterns were like “abstractions of sperm.” So, apparently, that and a racist 4chan thread were enough to move “Secret Sperm” from the fringes of internet hate into the far-right echo chamber, where anti-Obama news is like a cryptocurrency that is impossible to truly grasp. Hannity deleted the story from his site and released ...
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