Pat Buchanan
Left-leaning cable news network MSNBC officially fired Pat Buchanan last Thursday, four months after an anti-racist activist group launched an effort to get him fired because of his sociopolitical beliefs.
“After 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan,” MSNBC said in press statement. “We wish him well.”
The three-time US presidential candidate was indefinitely suspended last January from his commentary post at the network, two months after anti-racist group Color of Change called for his firing. The group noted Buchanan’s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, as an example of his “White supremacist ideology,” in addition to three appearances the former Nixon speech writer made on The Political Cesspool radio show. The shortwave program has been blasted by critics as “white supremacist” and “anti-Semitic,” and lauded by supporters as “pro-White.”
Anti-Defamation League president Abe Foxman added to the controversy by branding Buchanan an “anti-Semite.”
MSNBC President Phil Griffin
An indication of where the network was going to go with Buchanan came last month, when MSNBC President Phil Griffin said that he didn’t think the paleo-conservative’s book “should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.”
Buchanan lashed out as his enemies in a column published after his firing. “The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate,” he wrote.
Others have been equally supportive.
Historian Timothy Stanley, writing in the Washington Times last Friday, said MSNBC “wants to become the mirror opposite of Fox News: left-wing and unwatched,” noting that progressives at the network, including commentator Rachel Maddow, had warmed to Buchanan. Washington Times editor Brett Decker wrote that Buchanan’s firing exposed the mainstream media as really being “knee-jerk liberal.”
David Yontz, senior editor at Creators Syndicate, the company that distributes Buchanan’s articles, said they no have plans to drop him. “We don’t give out the information about the number of papers writers are in, but I can say that we plan to keep carrying Pat Buchanan,” Yontz said by e-mail.
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Shouldn’t the question be why Pat Buchanan actually wanted to work for a left-leaning cable news network like MSNBC in the first place? Isn’t it a bit stupid if one is a conservative?
An interesting, and ignored fact about Pat is that he’s responsible for Rachel Maddow:
“Mr. Buchanan also was instrumental in advancing Rachel Maddow’s television career. She was a guest on a show Mr. Buchanan hosted, and he liked her so much that he recommended her for more work. Nowadays, she calls him “Uncle Pat.” It’s no exaggeration to say Mr. Buchanan was part of the MSNBC “family.””
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/17/msnbc-blacklists-buchanan/
IMO Pat just recognizes a talented person when sees one, regardless of politically ideology. Whatever you want to say about Maddow, she knows her stuff and puts on a good show.