RIP Alan Colmes

Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes Dies at Age 66

I used to watch Hannity and Colmes. I enjoyed it.

 

Yes, I just heard about this.

Colmes was just mean, which was how he lasted so long alongside that guy. Colmes ripped Nixon on his death day in 1994.

 

Good on him. Couldn't have been half as brutal as the obit for Nixon from Hunter S. Thompson

 

Colmes got his start as a stand up.

 

Colmes got his end as a lie down.

 

'He Was a Crook'

 

Jesus I miss HST

 

He was an interesting breed of cat for sure.

 

The death of Fox News contributor Alan Colmes, who passed away in New York City this week at the age of 66, has been greeted with an outpouring of emotion from the channel’s on-and-off-the-air talent. Colmes, it seems, was a nice guy, a good friend, and an ideal colleague: all qualities one would imagine people who have had to spend their lives around the likes of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly would welcome. And while one should usually view tributes to the recently departed with a forgiving cynicism, in this case they are all too believable: Colmes was the most absurd, useless, and mocked television personality in America for many years, precisely because he was nice. In the context of Fox News, being a nice guy—and a “liberal” nice guy at that—meant being a buffoon, and a patsy. Colmes not only played the part to perfection—he defined it.

Colmes had a radio career, but he will almost surely be remembered for his job co-hosting Hannity & Colmes, the dreadful, morally bankrupt, Foxified version of Crossfire that ran for a dozen years and birthed the even more dreadful and morally bankrupt Hannity. The joke about Hannity & Colmes was always that Hannity dominated it to such an extent that Colmes was left as a mere bystander, asking soft questions while Hannity berated whatever liberal guest they brought on that night. This was of course true—Colmes’ air of nearly amused passivity became a running joke in itself—but it understated the way the format of the show set him up to fail. Yes, the two men appeared to have equal time during each segment, and yes, there was often a liberal guest and a conservative one. (Because it was Fox, the conservative guest was usually smarter or higher profile.) But the show, by design, was conservative, and often in racist or homophobic or Islamophobic ways.

Alan Colmes, Buffoon and Patsy, Was Fox News’ Original Liberal Weakling