‘Hannity & ?’
Regular Fox News Channel viewers can get ready to miss Alan Colmes — as in “Hannity & Colmes” — after this week’s announcement that the liberal half of the liberal-conservative duo is leaving the show at the end of the year. Co-hosted by Colmes and Sean Hannity for 12 years, the show is top-rated in its time slot, a tribute to the chemistry the two have developed arguing all sides of national political issues. Colmes, known for deft, left-of-center counterpunches to Hannity’s leading role, decided it was time to do something different, according to reports. He plans to continue as a commentator on a variety of Fox News shows while also hosting his radio program. The “Fair and Balanced” network said Colmes also will develop a weekend program. No word yet on a new sidekick for Hannity.
40 Years After
Forty years ago was a tragic and seminal time in America, a presidential election year in which Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, the Democratic National Convention disintegrated into chaos and Richard M. Nixon completed his remarkable political comeback. Something else happened on the political scene in 1968, a low-key event launching a movement that remains under the radar for many Americans. It was the debut of reason (its handlers prefer no capitalization on that word) magazine, “just one of many mimeographed zines then pushing a mostly obscure political and philosophical vision known as libertarianism,” according to a retrospective in the December 2008 edition of reason. Founding editor Lanny Friedlander cranked out the first copy on a typewriter. The magazine and the movement behind it was inspired in part by the objectivist sentiment popularized by Ayn Rand. Today, its best-known proponent is game show host Drew Carey. While we find much to like and some not to like about libertarianism, the movement and reason do a wonderful job presenting ideas outside the typical liberal-conservative construct. We congratulate reason in marking “40 years of free minds and free markets.”
