Fox News has shown token “liberal” Bob Beckel the door for making a racist comment to a black employee, the network said in a statement Friday.
Beckel, whose claim to fame is running Walter Mondale’s disastrous 1984 campaign, was also fired by Fox in 2015. After a four-month absence, reportedly to treat addiction to pain medication, Fox removed Beckel from The Five, its nearly unwatchable roundtable of unfiltered idiocy, and showed no sympathy in the aftermath.
“He took tremendous advantage of our generosity, empathy and goodwill and we simply came to the end of the road with him,” former executive Bill Shine said at the time.
Beckel, who joined Fox in 2000 and was open about his struggles with addiction, eventually worked his way back into the network’s good graces. After a brief stint with CNN, he returned to The Five earlier this year. “Bob was missed by many fans of The Five, and we’re happy to welcome him back to the show,” Rupert Murdoch said at the time.
But Beckel screwed up again earlier this week when he said something dumb to a colleague. A stupid remark on race from Beckel is little surprise — he once said “Chinamen” on air and called for a ban on building mosques in the U.S. — but given his ability to survive a similar incident in the past, his firing is somewhat unexpected.
Maybe it’s a sign that Fox News, after years of covering for Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, is being extra vigilant about questionable behavior exhibited by old white men on the payroll.
