Good Move, MSNBC: Buchanan’s Out, Harris Perry’s In
Was MSNBC wrong to move Pat Buchanan out? I think that’s good news, but the better news is that Melissa Harris Perry is moving in. I had the pleasure of doing a practice run with her recently and look forward to the launch of her show this weekend. Vigilant media advocacy for fair treatment by groups like the Women’s Media Center (where I’m on the board) does pay off eventually.
Arena asks:
POLITICO’s Tim Mak reports that longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan is being dropped by MSNBC as a result of the controversy surrounding his book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Buchanan argues he’s a victim of political correctness by critics of the book, which contains chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.” http://politi.co/Andwxq
Is this move justified? And why now, when Buchanan has been making substantively the same arguments for decades? Was Pat Buchanan’s Firing Fair?
My response: It’s time for these men, like Pat Buchanan, Foster Friess, and Rick Santorum to climb back under the prehistoric rock from whence they came. Their beliefs are the detritus of millennia of patriarchy, racism, homophobia, and assorted other oppressions. In a way, Pat’s unceremonious exit from MSNBC elicits my sympathy, because he really doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know, or how slavishly he’s holding onto the last vestiges of white male power hegemony over others that no longer works in today’s more expansive society. And MSNBC’s decision to end his contract is evidence that some progress is being made to keep the mainstream media more accountable.
And by the way, welcome to MSNBC, Melissa Harris Perry!
Here’s the link to my original post on Politico…
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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So long, Pat, we are hardly knew ye! I never really understood why MSNBC had him on the payroll to begin with- he was quite prominent on their election coverage and on a bunch of different MSNBC shows. My issue with Pat was/is not that he’s a conservative per se, but that he’s an unrepentant, ethically-challenged bigot and anti-Semite who engages in the worst form of Dog Whistle politics geared towards the angry White male demographic who are off watching Fox News, not MSNBC. I think they continued to keep Pat around because of the ‘ole boys club mentality of corporate news- he was a political neanderthal but he was a political insider going back to the Nixon administration and he was also a former journalist, so he was a member of The Club and if nothing else, they take care of their own.
I’m glad Melissa Harris Perry will be getting her own show although I wish it was during the prime time slot.
Now if we could just get something more than the occasional token woman on the Sunday talk shows…