via STANLEY: MSNBC blacklists Buchanan – Washington Times.
Colleagues liked him:
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said all his liberal interns would cringe when told they would be meeting Pat Buchanan. “They’d say, ‘Isn’t he an awful person? He’s so right-wing.’ But after a couple of days with him, they’d all want to adopt him as their father.”
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.”
But he did not fit the plan:
MSNBC is trying to establish itself as 100 percent liberal in an effort to corner the left-wing market, and [pressure group] Color of Change’s campaign threatened to tarnish that new image. Ordinarily, Mr. Buchanan would lobby and smooth his way out of the trouble that a book such as “Suicide of a Superpower” brought him. But he fell ill over Christmas and was unable to mount a fight back.
Not a good idea, says this writer:
Many commentators have expressed horror at MSNBC’s capitulation to extortion, but they miss the point that the capitulation came so easily because it suits the network’s effort to monopolize liberal viewership. This development is bad for American democracy, for it will create a bifurcated media within which left and right increasingly have no dialogue on the same TV station and, thus, no idea what each other is thinking.
The refusal by liberal outlets to air conservative views leads inexorably to myopic journalism that is cut off from mainstream opinion. Pat Buchanan will survive his ouster, but the quality of MSNBC’s output will take a terrible hit. Extreme liberals may rejoice, but the rest of us will be changing the channel.
If we hadn’t already, though it is interesting, with a flick of the thumb, to see what the other one-tenth thinks.
Blithe Spirit 