February 23 2016
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Alan Colmes, a top-rated television commentator who, as co-host with conservative Sean Hannity of “Hannity & Colmes,” became best known as the liberal in the “lion’s den” of Fox News, has died at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 66.
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His wife, Jocelyn Elise Crowley, said that he died late Feb. 22 or early Feb. 23. The cause was lymphoma.Mr. Colmes joined the fledging Fox News Channel in 1996 and hosted the political talk show with Hannity for 12 years. It became the channel’s longest-running prime time program before Mr. Colmes’s departure from the show in 2008.
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Mr. Colmes gamely endured withering criticism from some liberals, who perceived a betrayal in his presence on Fox, which was founded by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch as a counterbalance to what many conservatives saw as the left-wing bias in the news media.“Some liberals have a problem with me simply because I work at Fox and nothing I do short of storming off the set in a rage will get them to respect that I work there,” an interviewer for The Huffington Post, Steve Young, quoted Mr. Colmes as saying.
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“I feel quite lucky to have the platforms I have on both television and radio,” Mr. Colmes continued. “Even if everything its detractors say about Fox were true, the most liberal of liberal attitudes would be that one would get credit for being in the lion’s den. After all I do have the biggest audience of all the liberals.”
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A sad day for political tv- and radio junkies. As the token liberal on many a FOX News tv panel, he was never a shrinking violet in arguing against conservative orthodoxy. His radio show, which aired locally on AM930, attracted almost equal numbers of leftie and rightie callers. That’s because it aired on many FOX radio affiliates but also was syndicated to various progressive stations. Over the years, he got a lot of Canadian callers. RIP dear Alan.
Even though I didn’t necessarily agree with most of Alan’s political views I really liked him as a person.
He could give as well as he took in a debate. Even against Bill O’Reilly.
Alan was a class act. Sadly he was taken way too soon.