Yesterday, Alan Colmes and Rich Lowry had a rather contentious spat on Fox News after Lowry took offense to Colmes’ assertion that voters would sour on Rick Santorum’s candidacy once they “get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real.” Lowry took offense to Colmes’ characterization of the incident and the two engaged in a tense argument about it … and hours later, Colmes announced that he had contacted Santorum directly and apologized for his remarks.
But just because Rick Santorum has accepted Colmes’ apology, that isn’t going to stop the American Family Association from swinging into action and demanding that Fox News fire Colmes immediately:
Fox News radio host and political commentator Alan Colmes went so far beyond the line of decency yesterday that he should immediately be terminated by Fox.
Rick Santorum’s wife gave birth to a boy who died just two hours after his premature birth. The Santorums brought the body of the infant home so that their other children could see him, hold him and recognize the precious worth of every life.
…
Colmes has since apologized in private to the Santorums for his “hurtful comment.” But his comment goes way beyond hurtful. It is uncaring, callous, deeply offensive and beneath contempt. He owes the entire viewing audience of Fox News an on-air apology followed immediately by his resignation, whether forced or voluntary.
He may have made things right with the Santorums, but he has not made things right with America. He is unfit to serve any longer on Fox.
Bryan Fischer, Colmes’ frequent sparring partner, discussed the issue on his radio program today, insisting that Colmes’ remarks were “inexcusable” and utterly “beyond the pale”:
So there’s Alan Colmes, first of all, just showing complete callous indifference – I mean, this is cold. Remember, this is somebody who fancies himself a prince of compassion. Alan Colmes would see himself as the very paragon of tolerance, the very paragon on compassion, everybody in America ought to be as passionate as Alan Colmes. Shows absolutely callous disregard for the Santorums, for their feelings, for how they process the death of a son, for the way they handled it. Just inexcusable, beyond the pale.
We’ve sent an action alert out today … let Fox News know how your feel about the fact that they are paying Alan Colmes beau-coup dollars to host a radio program and to be a political analyst on their cable news outlets; that’s what he was doing yesterday, offering some kind of expert political commentary. We think he ought to be fire;, I think he ought to be fired; I think this is so far beyond the pale that Fox needs to do something about this,
That’s just unbelievable to me, that is just so far beyond any boundary or any standard of common decency that Fox has just got to do something about that. But you just see in Alan Colmes, in his body language, just the arrogance of those that consider themselves the elite in our culture and I think something needs to be done about that and something needs to be done about that right now.
The irony, of course, is that the AFA is a bona-fide hate group and Fischer himself is one of the Religious Right most consistent purveyors of unmitigated bigotry who regularly complains that any attempt to hold him accountable for his statements is literally a hate crime.
