When Fox News Channel was developing Sean Hannity's TV show, it was known as Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined. That liberal turned out to be Alan Colmes, who would eventually leave the gig after doing his part by playing the Washington Generals to Hannity's Harlem Globetrotters. It hardly mattered who sat in the "left" chair--they were there to get roughed up by the home team.

Until recently, professor Jane Hall was a regular guest on the O'Reilly Factor, debating conservative Bernie Goldberg. She's left Fox, and as she explained to CNN's Howard Kurtz (10/25/09), she never considered herself a liberal anyway:

KURTZ: When you appeared regularly on O'Reilly, were you there as a token from the dreaded MSM?

HALL: Well, I was there as a defender of the MSM. And you wouldn't believe how many famous journalists I talked to, who said better you than me. Let me tell you my side of the story. They didn't want to come on. It is hard to do, because it was like, when did you quit beating your wife? That was usually the question. But I felt it was worth doing.

KURTZ: Do you consider yourself a liberal?

HALL: No.

KURTZ: You were paired with Bernie Goldberg, the conservative point of view, who wrote a book about the media's slobbering love affair with Barack Obama?

HALL: Right.

KURTZ: So was that a fair pairing, to have someone who has that point of view, and you? You consider yourself a journalist.

HALL: I consider myself a journalist. I'm now able to say opinions because I'm a professor. I consider myself a moderate. In that universe, I was probably considered a wacky professor by O'Reilly. He would sort of pat me on the head and say, now, Jane, I know you liberals feel this way. And I'd say, I'm not really a liberal. So, yes, there's not necessarily a left/right comparison on there.

Bill O'Reilly explains the diversity of viewpoints available on the Fox News Channel (2/27/09):

The Fox News Channel features a variety of opinions. We parade in scores of guests each week with all kinds of views. Glenn Beck believes the nation is in crisis. Alan Colmes believes Obama could be the next FDR. Sean Hannity believes the Republican Party has the right formula. And I believe both parties need an overhaul. They need to start looking out for the folks. So you get a wide range of views, while our hard news people deliver solid facts.

Huh. Three right-wingers and Alan Colmes--who lost his show on Fox two months ago.

Two things strike me about this appearance by Alan Colmes on the Colbert Report: One, the fact that he would take part with good humor in a humiliating joke that's on him illustrates why he was the perfect person to play the role of the Liberal To Be Named Later. Second, it's remarkable that even in the parts where he's presumably expressing his own opinions--rather than the pre-scripted expressions of adulation handed to him by Colbert--he's still manages, reflexively, to come up with the perfect Fox News Democrat position: He agrees with Colbert on the issue at hand, but produces a different, more innocuous reason for his stance.

Watch the whole thing--but the best part is the opening credits.

The announcement that Alan Colmes is leaving Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes show, where he serves as co-host to Sean Hannity, raises the pressing question: Will anyone notice?

Fox News executives have long represented the show as an evenhanded nightly debate. Yet a reviewer in Britain's Sunday Business Post (8/24/03) perhaps summarized the peculiarity of this Fox-style "debate" best in noting that "the title…Hannity & Colmes is something of a misnomer, because the other host--the timid, bespectacled liberal Alan Colmes--acts essentially as a sacrificial lamb and may as well not be there."

Alan Colmes: the "Liberal to be Determined" on Sean Hannity's show

Colmes identifies himself (USA Today, 2/1/95) as "quite moderate." That's an example of Colmes' gift for understatement: As Extra! (11-12/03) has documented, he boasted on air of voting for New York's Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and "seemed  to have a special affinity for the conservative senator" Trent Lott. His "tendency to concede points to the right and criticize the left make him the favorite liberal of many conservatives," including Newt Gingrich, as well as

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch ("you're great for a liberal"--4/16/01), Republican House Whip Tom DeLay ("you are my favorite liberal"--10/18/99), Christian right leader James Dobson ("he's my favorite liberal"--4/28/03) and, of course, Sen. Trent Lott ("you may be a liberal but you're one of the better ones I've seen on TV"--4/30/03).

Once appearing as a guest on Fox's O'Reilly Factor (4/11/03), Colmes received a figurative pat on the head from the show's host, Bill O'Reilly, for not criticizing the White House during the Iraq War. O'Reilly praised Colmes for his silence: "I put forth that once the shelling starts--and you did this--you kept quiet, OK." Colmes dutifully responded: "Well, look, I've kept quiet. My choice has been--I have not criticized the administration or this war effort while there are men and women in harm's way, and I will not, and that is my--that's a choice I make."

One might note that the war is now in its sixth year--that's a long time to keep quiet.

The New York Times reported today (11/24/08) that Hannity

may become the sole host of the program, according to one source close to the network who insisted on anonymity while speaking about private deliberations.

And that will be different how, exactly?