The Cutline‘Blacklisted’ Buchanan out at MSNBC; critics wonder what took so long
Pat Buchanan's "days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end."
That's what the political commentator and conservative lightning rod wrote in an essay on the American Conservative's website late Thursday.
"After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing," Buchanan wrote, "after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous."
MSNBC confirmed Buchanan's departure in a tellingly brief statement: "After ten years, we've parted ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well."
Buchanan says he was "blacklisted" by the network after the Oct. 18 publication of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" and several groups--including Color of Change, a group devoted to raising awareness of the concerns of black Americans--called for his firing, claiming the book offered a "white supremacist ideology."
MSNBC president Phil Griffin told reporters at a Television Critics Association panel last month that Buchanan had been suspended indefinitely, and that Buchanan's future with the network was up in the air.
"I don't think the ideas that he put forth are appropriate for national dialogue on MSNBC," Griffin said. "He won't be coming back during the book tour."
Buchanan says the book tour was, in effect, proof his ideas were not racist or otherwise offensive.
"They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin's, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News, and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity," Buchanan wrote. "If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs, and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism? How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?"
Eric Deggans, a critic for the Tampa Bay Times, wondered on Friday what took MSNBC so long to formally ditch Buchanan.
"Buchanan's departure is more about a failure of media outlets to police themselves," Deggans wrote. "If MSNBC had listened to complaints years ago, it wouldn't have taken a massively embarrassing public campaign and targeted protest from advocacy groups to unseat a guy who has regularly tried to pass off prejudice as reasoned political commentary."
"He's been making the same racially insensitive, anti-Semitic and homophobic statements for the past 50 years," Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters, told the Associated Press.
Gawker's Hamilton Nolan called it "a refreshing move" in a post entitled "Bye Bye Pat Buchanan, You Old Racist."
Oddly, Buchanan's announcement, published through his website's Twitter feed, solicited just one reply. "Keep speaking the truth my friend," Twitter user @PapaHemmy wrote. "America needs you."
But many of Buchanan's supporters could be found in the American Conservative's comments section:
Mr. Buchanan you are one of the few courageous men left who will stand up to the increasingly totalitarian behemoths who are trying their best to subjugate the citizens of this once great country into a cowering and [vile] heap of wage slaves, who do what they're told and think what they're told by their elites. And you have always done it with goodwill and civility. Certainly you are one of my heroes whose vision, advice and wisdom make you stand head and shoulders above this cesspool of mediocrity and craven cowardliness we live in today. Keep writing please and thanks for everything!
Another:
Judge Andrew Napolitano and you silenced in the same week. Apparently, only milquetoast establishment political discussion is permitted on the public airwaves.
One railed against MSNBC in the Wall Street Journal:
A conservative voice in a leftist arena undeservedly gives validation to a debate that looks more like an ambush. When Scarborough is not there, the others make a party, and Scarborough himself doesn't appear to be much of a conservative; he may as well just say he's joined the dark force.
"PB will be on FOX by Monday," another commenter added. "No one watches MSNBC anyway."
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