It was May of 1999 and I was listening to the Sean Hannity Show on WABC-AM in New York City. He had a guest on and an accusation he hurled at the individual on his show was that Salon.com had written something favorable about him.

Hearing this I said to myself, "if Sean Hannity thinks there is something negative about Salon.com, then that is a web site that I need to check out." I have always been a progressive in case you were wondering about all of this.

You might ask, "Why were you listening to Sean Hannity?" and I would answer that you need to know what the opposition is thinking and that was the only reason for it. It was very instructive during the last few years of the Clinton Administration to understand where someone like Sean Hannity stood on the issues. I will add that he was not yet syndicated nationwide for the earlier period when I listened to him and was mainly in the New York metro market, as I recall.

As a result of Sean Hannity's banter, I became a regular reader of Salon.com starting in May, 1999 and I have never stopped. When the Premium Program was announced by David Talbot some years back, I signed up immediately to help Salon and have been a Premium member ever since.

It's interesting these days to have the parallel universes of both Salon.com and OpenSalon with the intersection of the two in the way of feature posts and the like, on a daily basis.

Anyone else have a Sean Hannity story?