Being Alan Colmes

So, Alan Colmes finally called Ann Coulter on the carpet for her behavior and many in the blogosphere are applauding him for finally showing some backbone.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to join that chorus.

First of all, the whole takedown lasted about 10 seconds. Coulter was at first flumoxed by Colmes' sudden sign of justifiable outrage. But she quickly recovered her talking points and kept hammering away at them. Colmes simply let the "your a liar" accusation pass after his initial expression of outrage. A man worthy of praise would not have allowed her to recover.

But, even more disappointing, was that after years of being the right-wing's favorite token liberal opposition, the one time Colmes expressed real backbone against these neanderthals was the one time one of them made the mistake of directly calling Colmes a liar.

Ann Coulter has been calling Democrats liars and traitors for years, but she usually does it in either general terms or against people that few Democrats would like to be seen defending or against Democrats who aren't there to defend themselves. Hers has been a collective attack, yet Colmes has always treated it as if she were attacking a group not including himself. It was only when Coulter directly called Colmes a liar that he expressed any meaningful outrage.

Alan, Coulter has been calling you a liar, to your face, for years! Stop pretending that her accusations don't apply to you. She's been kicking sand in your face and you've been taking it as if it were of no consequence. Don't expect that I will applaud you just because she broke the rules by directly attacking you. If you want me to consider you a mensch then you better start expressing the same kind of outrage even when it is not you who is being directly attacked.

You are a Democrat. Coulter considers Democrats to be traitors. Therefore Coulter considers you to be a traitor. Figure it out.