http://gawker.com/news/themtube/themtube-sleeping-with-the-mclaughlin-group-243554.php
"[...] At first I wondered why these segments, which were filmed in foreign countries, were on a show titled "Hannity's America," but than I realized that they kind of made me scared of minorities, and nothing is more American than that. [...] In one final, attention-starved "only in America" moment, a man proposed to his girlfriend with Hannity and his cameras standing by—leaving Hannity to close the hour of war-mongering, stereotyping, and partisan politics with the absurd line: 'bringing people together.'"
Blegh, this is common to a lot of right-leaning talk shows, as I'm sure listeners/viewers already know. It beats relentlessly parading a bunch of downers in front of people. (My guess is that Jon Stewart is successful because even if what he talks about is depressing, at least it's funny.)
Another part is that inserting these feel-good moments, mediated ALWAYS by the host, fits in with the common right-wing talk show practice of making a program not about current events, but ultimately about the host himself. O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Savage, et. al., and even Nancy Grace, are basically marketed as larger than life do-gooders and the show revolves around their egos and ultimately their own personalities more than any set of current events. In my opinion, mixing in some "good" stuff with the scare-mongering is akin to applying an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, a technique in operant conditioning.
Almost all the books by these figures -- O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Scarborough -- have a picture of -- guess who? -- themselves on the cover, usually in a business suit and God-and-country tie or some affected rugged wear, posing in a study with bookcases behind them, or on a hill overlooking some vista. "Me, me, me," the cover says.
By comparison, although leftists do sometimes put out books like this (Chomsky's _Understanding Power_) for the most part lefty books rely less on the appeal of the ego of the host than on the appeal of an idea, which is why books by Verso or AK Press or whatever tend to have abstract designs or photos on the cover. Not Newt Gingrich's pasty, soft face, showing off his lawyer-looking book collection (row upon row of hardbound _Southwestern Reproter_).
-B.