Annette John-Hall: Fox News strangles open debate by firing a liberal Philly voice

I'm sure Fox News, cash cow that it is, doesn't need little ol' me to bolster its already fat ratings.

I was just one blue fish in a big red pond.

But the cable network's recent firing of liberal commentator Marc Lamont Hill pretty much guaranteed that viewers like me won't be watching anymore.

And believe me, there are plenty of us. There's a reason Fox News' ratings are higher than CNN's and MSNBC's combined. Among the legions of antiadministration viewers who live off of red meat are independent thinkers who want to listen to a different perspective, who don't appreciate just being preached to by the choir.

Which was why, as much as I could, I tried to catch Hill - a Philly native and Penn Ph.D. who is an associate professor of education at Columbia University - going toe to toe with Bill O'Reilly.

Their exchanges on The O'Reilly Factor were not only provocative and informative, but they also made for good theater. Truth be told, I waited for O'Reilly to win me over. But against Hill, a brilliant debater whose verbal knockouts often made O'Reilly wonder what hit him, it never happened.

And now that Hill's gone, the Obama administration's criticism that Fox News operates as a "communications arm of the Republican Party" rings even more true.

And it's left Hill wondering why Fox owner Rupert Murdoch caved to what he described as a "Van Jones-like" campaign against him, alluding to the innovative White House-appointed special counsel for green jobs who lost his position after unrelenting pressure from the right for signing a controversial petition.

Hill, 30, moves as fast as he speaks: Ph.D. by age 26, professor at Temple soon after, author of

Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity

. Hill was tapped early as the up-and-coming public intellectual, appearing frequently on MSNBC, Fox, CNN, and CourtTV.

But three years ago, as the presidential primaries heated up, he took a paid gig to appear regularly on Fox, partly because the network wanted a liberal voice, but mainly because "I wanted to bear a certain witness by speaking truths in uncomfortable places," Hill says. "I was speaking to people who weren't used to hearing my perspective."

And though Fox almost always labeled him an Obama supporter - I guess because he's a young black man and all - truth is, Hill's views could be described as left of the president's.

In the presidential primary, he voted for Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Not only that, Hill was critical of the president's winning the Nobel Peace Prize, pointing out that any leader who promotes two wars is not about promoting peace.

But it was Hill's commentary about the war that rankled the right's feathers.

Conservative bloggers such as David Horowitz slammed Fox by skewering Hill, calling the professor a "black in residence" who wasn't qualified to speak about the crisis in Iran.

"Hill's expertise, such as it is, is hip-hop culture - the very low end, in other words, of popular culture which is better known as rap," Horowitz blogged.

"As if I have intellectual cooties," Hill says of his scholarly interests. "Look, I've spent time in the Middle East. I've worked endlessly in the antiwar movement. Not to mention I have a Ph.D. But I wrote a book about hip hop, so my expertise is limited to hip hop?"

The smear campaign worked. As is fitting for this age of instantaneous breaking news and endless cable crawls, Hill discovered he had been fired via a Google alert.

But Hill says he holds no ill will against Fox News and even planned to take Obama to task for his refusal to grant the network an interview when he made his media rounds for health-care reform last month.

After all, Hill says, ignoring any voice, no matter how strident, compromises a democracy. Fox showed him so.

"If I learned any lesson, it's that the biggest champions of free speech only want free speech from their perspective," he says. "They'll go to the mat and fight for Glenn Beck's right to call our president a racist, but if I say Mumia deserves a new trial, then I don't deserve to work."

But talent like Hill's won't be wasted for long. He's already considering offers from other cable networks.

"I get stopped on the street by people who say, 'I don't agree with everything you say, but I respect you.' That's a testimony not only to me but to the possibilities of people willing to have an open dialogue."