Hannity and Colmes is a long-running program on the Fox News Network. The show stars hosts Conservative Sean Hannity and Liberal Alan Colmes. The hosts interview guests on topics related to politics and current affairs. The show manages to stir up a lot of controversy, especially among web denizens having strong views for one side on the other. Recently Alan Colmes announced he will leave the program to develop an independent program on Fox, and the net was abuzz with opinion about the show.

What I want from news commentary are ideas, either new facts or new ways of looking at facts that explain why events unfolded as they did. Hannity and Colmes succeeds at doing that through the guests they have on the show. Neither host contributes as much as they could to the process. Hannity is too often a preacher delivering a limited number of canned sermons. Hannity largely ignores what the guest has to say, delivers a sermon that is somehow related to the general topic, and then asks, “Don’t you agree?” Colmes listens to what guests have to say and responds to it, but often fails to advance the subject by analyzing what was said. After fifteen guests have told Colmes what winning in Iraq means, he will pose to the next guest “We really don’t know what winning in Iraq means, do we?” He fails to follows up with a critique of the oft-repeated definition is inadequate.

Like all preachers, Hannity is pompous and talkative. That doesn’t mean the sermon is wrong. You may well have lost your soul for all the reasons the preacher cites. It does mean that the story is predictable, and that’s not what I want from a news commentator. Colmes greatest contribution to the program was his humor deflating the Hannity pomposity. Without Colmes, Hannity is often too much to bear.

Talk show people make their living by talking, so just being talkative cannot be the basis of criticism. Silence is always a knob click away. It is a question presenting new insights in a digestible form. My vote for the most grating style goes Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who gives personal advice on a radio talk show. Dr. Laura speaks with the voice of God, only considerably more authoritative. A caller asks something like, “Dr. Laura, we want to go to Vegas for a swinging weekend. Would it be OK to lock the kids in the basement for the weekend?” By the time Dr. Laura gets done telling the idiot why that isn’t a good idea in her unique style, you can’t help but think that there must be more merit to the idea than you had originally supposed.

Liberal commentary is too often typified by Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddox over on the MSNBC cable network. It is endless preaching to the choir. “That George Bush sure is evil!” … “Amen, brother, amen.” Choir duty and preaching opportunities are afforded to guests, but heretics get about as far into the door as they would in Reverend Wright’s church. There is no concern for factual arguments, and no commentary that a high school student could not guess was coming.

What I want from commentary are new facts and new insights. I don’t want to join choir practice. That’s not what everyone wants. I hope Fox gets a vigorous Liberal opponent for Hannity that will sharpen the debate.