Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

comment on. Instead, he asked Peggy if there were any great lines in the speech that might
live on in the public memory. Thanks for manning the barricades, Alan.
Colmes's rhetoric may not be fiery, but at least there's not much of it. In the State of the
Union show, TeamFranken did a little rudimentary content analysis: they counted how many
words Hannity said, and then counted how many words Colmes said. Then we compared them:
HANNITY COLMES
2,086 1,261
It makes sense that Sean Hannity is the alpha male to Alan Colmes's zeta male. After all, Hannity
got to pick his li'1 partner himself. Roger Ailes, who has a real eye for talent, personally
chose the telegenic, soon-to-be superstar Hannity to head up a show in prime time on his
newly created Fox News Channel. According to The New York Times, the show's working
title was Hannity and Liberal to be Determined. After Hannity, a self-described "archconservative,"
chose Colmes, the former stand-up comedian and self-described "moderate"
("I'm quite moderate," he told a USA Today reporter), Colmes and his lawyer demanded that
the name of the show be changed. It would be the last argument that Colmes would ever win.
When I first met Hannity, I had no idea who the hell he was. It was 1996, in a green
room at Fox News. I had just finished my first appearance on The Factor to promote Rush
Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, and was about to pick up my coat when I was confronted by
what appeared to be an angry, Irish ape-man.
Hannity did not like the title of my book
"I don't believe in making ad hominem attacks," he said, thrusting his jaw in a characteristic
display of simian aggression. "Oh. That's why I titled it Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat
Idiot. It's an ironic comment on the fact that Rush makes ad hominem attacks all the time.
You see?"
Evidently not. "I've never heard him make an ad hominem attack." As I would later
learn, this was in keeping with Sean's seasoned ability to lie and believe it. Or at least just lie.
"Really? How about when he called Chelsea Clinton `the White House dog'? Would
that qualify?"
This was a very famous incident. On Rush's TV show in 1993, shortly after Clinton
took office and years before Buddy joined the First Family, the show put up a picture of
Socks, the cat. "Did you know that the Clintons not only have a White House cat," Rush said