Extended absence forced Fox News to fire Bob Beckel

Q. What has become of Bob Beckel, the only liberal on Fox News’ afternoon talk show “The Five”?

A. Fox News says it tried to be as liberal as it could, but it was forced to let Beckel go in late June, four months after the controversial firebrand took an extended leave for back surgery and drug addiction treatment.

“We tried to work with Bob for months, but we couldn’t hold ‘The Five’ hostage to one man’s personal issues,” Bill Shine, the network’s senior executive vice president of programming, told the Huffington Post on June 25. “He took tremendous advantage of our generosity, empathy and goodwill, and we simply came to the end of the road with him.”

As those who have followed his long political career may know, he began by working on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 while Beckel was still a student at Wagner College on Staten Island, N.Y., where he played football. After earning a bachelor of arts, he worked in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer and then, as the youngest-ever deputy assistant secretary of state, helped the Carter administration ratify the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty. He then became Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign manager in 1984, when he reportedly fed Mondale the famous line, “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’” during a debate with Democratic opponent Gary Hart.

After Mondale was buried by incumbent Ronald Reagan that fall, Beckel set up shop in Washington with his Beckel-Cowan consulting company. It was “a pioneering ‘grassroots’ lobbying firm whose specialty was building support for policy ideas — or creating the appearance of it — around the country,” according to Robert Kaiser in the Washington Post. “This was the art form that came to be known as ‘Astroturf’ lobbying — since the grassroots sentiments being expressed were not entirely natural.”

With his long history in politics, Beckel became a natural as a media pundit. He joined Fox in 2000 and became one of the co-hosts when “The Five” premiered in July 2011. He also wrote a point-counterpoint column with Cal Thomas in USA Today.

But I suppose you could say he wasn’t your stereotypical liberal, because he often became a lightning rod for what many might consider harshly right-wing views. When WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange started publishing a flood of sensitive military and diplomatic documents in 2010, Beckel said on Fox’s “Cashin’ In,” “This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so ... there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the (SOB).”

He stirred up plenty of rage when he once implied that rapes do not happen on college campuses; when, after the Boston Marathon bombings, he suggested that no visas should be issued to students from Islamic countries; and, when, after San Francisco banned public nudity in 2012, he said that nudists as children “were probably sexually assaulted, I don’t know.” He also proposed a moratorium on building new mosques in the United States until it could be determined which Muslims were terrorists. Even early this year the 66-year-old New York City native suggested that “multicultural dating” might be helping fuel the spread of radical Islam.

“Back when I was young, you didn’t date out of your own ethnicity,” the divorced father of two said on “The Five.” “But in Europe and other places, this mingling that’s going on here, younger people are beginning to find this acceptable. And that’s the thing that is sort of scary because they’re getting exposed to it on a daily basis.”

But on Feb. 16, Beckel made his final appearance on “The Five” as he prepared for back surgery in March. When his extended absence sparked speculation that he had been fired, Fox issued a statement on April 30 that Beckel was undergoing treatment for a drug addiction relapse. During his earliest days on “The Five,” Beckel had told viewers, “I’m a recovering addict, and cocaine was my drug of choice.”

“Bob Beckel has entered a rehab facility for treatment of an addiction to prescription pain medication,” Fox said in April. “His relapse developed over the last several months as he tried to cope with extensive back pain before and after he underwent major back surgery. We hope our viewers and the public will respect Bob’s privacy during this difficult time.”

Two months later, however, the network decided to pull the plug, surprising Beckel.

“Fox has been good to (me), especially when I was healing,” he tweeted later that day. “I was healing from major back surgery. I could not walk. I took no advantage. I guess I’ll never understand their anger. It is all so very sad.”

For a best-of-Beckel retrospective, try www.mediaite.com/tv/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ridiculous-a-tribute-to-the-fives-bob-beckel.

Today’s trivia

How did the horse chestnut tree earn its name?

Answer to Wednesday’s trivia: Because of a fight over distribution rights, the song “Wild Thing” by the Troggs was released in 1966 on two competing labels — Atco and Fontana. Because both were made from the same original recording, Billboard combined all sales in figuring its popularity, which made it the only single ever to simultaneously reach No. 1 for two companies when it hit the top spot on July 9, 1966. Rolling Stone placed it at No. 261 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. It was written by James Voight (aka Chip Taylor), brother of actor Jon Voight and uncle of Angelina Jolie.

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 9:46 AM with the headline "Extended absence forced Fox News to fire Bob Beckel."