For Alan Colmes, Nothing But Left-Handed Praise

Talk Show Liberal Takes Heat From His Own Kind

Alan Colmes is being ignored.

He walks into La Colline on a recent morning, accompanied by a Fox News publicist. The Capitol Hill restaurant is heavy with members of Congress, staffers and lobbyists, none of whom notices the co-host of a top-rated cable news show in their midst.

Colmes, 53, is the designated mild liberal on Fox News's prime-time debate show, "Hannity & Colmes," the ideological and stylistic counterbalance to bulldog conservative Sean Hannity. He's in town to promote his new book, "Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right & Right Is Wrong."

(snip)

In his book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," Al Franken mocks Colmes by rendering every mention of his name in tiny type. Franken writes that "Colmes' duties as co-host of 'Hannity & Colmes' include adding toner to the copiers and printers loofah-ing Roger Ailes in his personal steam room." Colmes dismisses Franken as a "liberal satirist." Such knocks, he says, are consistent with the belief among many liberals that Fox News is a conservative network -- a conclusion he rejects. "If you're going to make the argument that Fox is conservative, you can't make it very easily unless you diminish my role," Colmes says.

Unlike, say, CNN's Paul Begala, Colmes says his career has been as a broadcaster, not as a politician or advocate. Colmes, who like Hannity was raised on Long Island, has hosted a string of successful radio talk shows in New York. Fox News hired Hannity -- himself a radio talk show host -- before Colmes. (The show's unofficial in-house title was "Hannity & LTBD" -- "Liberal to Be Determined.") Colmes was hired partly at the suggestion of Hannity, who knew Colmes from New York radio circles.

(snip)

In the course of an hour-long breakfast, Colmes frequently invokes the success of "Hannity & Colmes" as a defense of his style and ability. Now in its seventh season, the show is consistently the highest-rated program in the 9 to 10 p.m. slot within the small universe of cable news programming.

Liberal critics dismiss this popularity by comparing its appeal to that of watching a wolf devour a pussycat. But Colmes is not entirely without liberal defenders.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20053-2003Nov28.html

doesn't look that old. Typo?

Colmes is such an old fart!

Colmes should be tried for treason.