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.

Former Sean Hannity show regular Hal Turner recently was arrested for blogging that "we have enough bullets to put... down" those not heeding his "warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die." While criminal prosecution most definitely is not the general solution for hateful commentary, the Hartford Courant's Edmund H. Mahony (6/25/09) reports facts that clearly move the Internet radio host's rantings from the realm of First Amendment protection solidly into incitement of violence. Turner, Mahony writes,

was arrested again Wednesday on charges that he threatened to assault and murder three federal judges in retaliation for a ruling upholding handgun bans in the Chicago area....

The federal charges in Chicago arise from Internet postings on June 2 and 3 in which Turner allegedly proclaimed his "outrage" over a June 2 decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer of the Chicago-based U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed," said the postings, which also included photographs, phone numbers, work addresses and room numbers of the judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

The upholding of this handgun ban--stemming from white supremacist Matt Hale having contracted the slaughter of a U.S. District Court judge, her mother and her husband--offended Turner so much that he commented that "apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn't get the hint after those killings.... It appears another lesson is needed." One has to wonder if this further intensely violent call to arms will be enough to force Sean Hannity's  repudiation of his documented history of association with Turner.

Reporting that "reactionary radio host and white supremacist Hal Turner was taken into custody Wednesday after remarks urging Catholics to 'take up arms' against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official over legislation... regarding the church," independent news outlet Raw Story's John Byrne (6/4/09) deepens the story by recalling that "Turner used to be a regular on Sean Hannity's radio show (the Fox News pundit)":

When Hannity said he didn't have an association with Turner earlier this year, Turner wrote:

I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air.

Here, for your own consideration, is Crooks and Liars blogger John Amato quoting Turner's language that Connecticut Police Chief Michael J. Fallon deemed "above and beyond the threshold of free speech" for "inciting others through his website to commit acts of violence":

"It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally," the blog stated. "These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die."

And, the post continued, "If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this; I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down too."

Directly referring to the reason such hate speech is such a hot topic currently, the Hartford Courant reports that "elsewhere on [Turner's] blog, the recent fatal shooting of a Kansas abortion provider is called 'a righteous act.'"

Prefacing a Daily Show segment (3/4/09) with his version of current big-media reporting: "Recent opinion polls indicate that six weeks into Barack Obama's administration, the American public thinks they approve of his performance--but it turns out they're wrong," Jon Stewart runs clips of celebrity news figures like Fox's Sean Hannity asking, "How did the market react to this latest liberal spending spree? Well, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped almost 400 points," and of Fox Business Network's Neil Cavuto asking, "The Dow is down more than 1,500 points, nearly 3,000 since Election Day, now is this a vote of no confidence in this administration?" Mocking this common media canard, Stewart even calls the Dow

a real-time cause-and-effect precision barometer of how the president is doing. It's been that way for years. For example--little-known fact--Wall Street hated Ronald Reagan: Look at the numbers the day he got inaugurated. And they hated it when Truman announced we'd won World War II. And, to give you an idea of what a finely tuned measure of America's national mood the Dow is, when the Titanic sunk? Through the roof!

Stewart's take-away moral: "So what seems to be being suggested here is that opinion polls don't matter; the stock market is the only rational, objective indicator of a commander in chief's performance." Read the contrary evidence in FAIR's new Media Advisory: "What the Dow Isn't: Stocks Misused As 'Scorecard' of White House Policy" (3/5/09).

Keeping tabs on the "Fair and Balanced" network, Mark Howard (News Corpse, 3/2/09) details how

last year, prior to the election, Fox News was already fortifying its right flank. New multimillion dollar contracts were handed out to Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Hannity's show shed the dead weight of alleged liberal Alan Colmes. Glenn Beck was brought in to shore up the daytime crowd. Neil Cavuto, a bully who is every bit as obnoxious as O'Reilly poisons the economic news, and he is also managing editor of Murdoch's Fox Business News. And just this week Bill Sammon, author of a shelf full of bitterly partisan books, was promoted to VP and Washington editor for the network.

The result is a full-court press of some of the dirtiest political assaults ever waged by what is advertised as a "news" network. Fox News is shamelessly pushing a campaign to characterize Obama as a socialist--a committed opponent of America and its values--from 6:00 am with the crew of Fox & Friends, to after midnight with broadcasts and repeats of their primetime neanderthal shoutcasters.

Howard even reminds us that, as usual, "they get their marching orders directly from Rupert Murdoch who last September said that… "[Obama's] policy is really very, very naive, old fashioned, 1960s socialist."

Sean Hannity is a great American. You can hear it every day on his national radio show, where the standard caller greeting to the host is, "Sean, you’re a great American!" The catchphrase is so well-known, it's been commercialized!

And who is more patriotic than Hannity, who uses his daily radio and Fox News Channel shows to maintain a vigilant watch over the slightest hint of anti-Americanism or subversion? Who warned you more often or at more earsplitting volume about how Barack Obama's life was littered with anti-American friends and associates advocating for the violent overthrow of the United States government? Who sounded the alarm (Hannity's America, 4/13/08) over Bill Ayers and his leadership role in the 1960s Weather Underground group, "whose mission was the overthrow of the United States government"? And who keeps you current on who’s who among the anti-Americans: the U.N. (Hannity & Colmes, 9/23/08), the Rev. Jeremiah (Hannity & Colmes, 8/5/08), the Air America radio network (Hannity & Colmes, 6/25/07), Michael Moore and his film Sicko (Hannity & Colmes, 6/17/07)?

That's why we were truly shocked to learn that Hannity's website is hosting a discussion where his fans can vote on the best way to violently overthrow the U.S. government:

"There's a lot of talk on this board about armed revolt," writes the Hannity.com regular centerscroll (who's posted more than 1,700 times on the site). So he started an online poll (2/23/09) to find out "what form of such a revolt the revolutionaries would prefer"--listing as choices a "military coup," in which "the military deposes the government and declares itself in charge"; an "armed rebellion," where "the fed-up civilian population attacks their enemies forcibly...to ultimately depose the government and install one that follows their own ideals"; or "war for secession," meaning "individual states try to secede and perhaps ultimately must arm to do it."

centerscroll did not provide any options for those who saw no need to overthrow the Obama administration, or who preferred to resist the government through nonviolent means.  As of 4 p.m. on February 27, 76 Hannity.com participants had voted, with 18 choosing the coup option, 31 picking armed rebellion and 27 opting for a war of secession.

Hannity better hope his Fox News colleague Bill O'Reilly doesn't see this poll. When some Huffington Post readers celebrated a report about Nancy Reagan having an injury--in an online thread that was deleted by the blog--O'Reilly likened the blog's founder Arianna Huffington to the Nazis and the KKK (Media Matters, 2/28/08):

Arianna Huffington is the editor of this. She knows it comes in, puts it up, along with a lot of other vile stuff. I mean, the whole thing is a sewer....  And don't you think Americans should start holding people like Arianna Huffington accountable for this?...  She's allowing that stuff to go on.

Do you suppose O'Reilly would hold his colleague Sean Hannity to the same standard?

Commenter milo janus reacts to a Michael Calderone Politico.com piece (11/24/08) on Alan Colmes' arguably inconsequential departure from Fox News' long-running Hannity & Colmes:

Word had it some years ago that Jeff Cohen, founder of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (who was also producer of the Donahue show on MSNBC right after he got booted from the network for being too critical of the build-up to the Iraq War), had often had spirited off-camera debates with Hannity during his years as a commentator. Jokes about a possible Hannity and Cohen show were squashed when Colmes got the spot. The logic is obvious enough. Though Colmes is a smart guy, Cohen's uncompromising style of attack would have likely overwhelmed the telegenic Hannity, and we all know that would be a serious no-no on Fox.

Though slightly garbling the sequence of events--Colmes already was Hannity's co-host at the time--janus certainly is right about Cohen's "uncompromising style"... and about Fox's strong aversion to progressive vs. conservative debates that it thinks the conservative might actually lose.

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "An Aggressive Conservative vs. a 'Liberal to Be Determined': The False Balance of Hannity & Colmes" (11-12/03) by Steve Rendall

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?

In the lead-up to the November 4 election, Fox News host Sean Hannity warned (10/26/08) that an Obama victory would represent "a complete liberal takeover." He opined that a Democratic electoral victory would herald "an unchecked, ultraliberal government, passing the most liberal agenda under the most liberal president in U.S. history."

Citing the National Journal's flawed survey that called Obama the "most liberal senator," Hannity called the Democratic nominee "more extreme than Barbara Boxer or Russ Feingold, and even the admitted socialist Bernie Sanders."

So what's a conservative news channel to do when the American people turn out in droves and give this "extreme" agent of a "liberal takeover" 364 electoral college votes?

Remind viewers that his platform was actually, er, "center-right"! That's what Hannity and Fox analyst Karl Rove claimed on Hannity & Colmes (11/5/08):

ROVE: Let's make it clear. He [Obama] ran a center- right campaign. He said....

HANNITY: I agree with you.

ROVE: Center, absolutely. It was.

The New York Times splashed the Barack Obama-Bill Ayers "connection" story on the front page of Saturday's paper. Obama's practically non-existent ties to former Weather Underground figure William Ayers have been the subject of endless speculation among folks like right-wing yakker Sean Hannity, who suggested to ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he should ask about Obama about Ayers in a debate (which Stephanopoulos subsequently did). So with a little more than a month left before the election, the Times grants 2,100 words to explaining... well, that "the two men do not appear to have been close." So why write the story in the first place? The Times offers one clue: "Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama.... Conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers."

In other words, the far right has deemed it newsworthy.

For bonus irony, we are treated to this from John McCain:

In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"