Dear Commons Community,

Pundit and commentator Pat Buchanan went to Fox News on Friday for his first television appearance since his stormy departure from MSNBC last week.  Speaking to Sean Hannity, Buchanan lashed out at his critics and staunchly defended the book that got him kicked off of the network he had called home for ten years.

The book, Suicide of a Superpower, was published in October.  Buchanan was criticized for writing chapters such as the one entitled “The End of White America,” and for appearing on a white nationalist radio show to promote the book. MSNBC president Phil Griffin said that sections of the book were not “appropriate for the national dialogue” and kept Buchanan off the air for months until letting him go.  The Huffington Post reported: 

“Buchanan repeated an argument he’d made in a Thursday column: that a left-wing witch hunt had hounded him off the air.

“I think they’re engaged in… a blacklist of conservative and traditionalist thought,” he said.

“There are elements in our society and they are predominantly on the hard left that say it’s no longer enough to challenge and contradict or defeat or fight these fellas in arguments,” Buchanan said. “We’ve got to smear them, stigmatize them as racists or homophobic and then we’ve gotta silence and censor them and the way we do it is go after the media outlets that put them on the air…this is un-American what is going on right now.”

This is rough language for someone who has been on the television talk circuit as long as Buchanan has.  He has never backed away from his conservative views and I am not sure that what he is saying in his book is much different than positions he has taken and articulated in the past.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As expected, Governor Chris Christie vetoed the same-sex marriage bill passed by the New Jersey Legislature earlier this week.    A New York Times editorial  rightfully characterizes his veto as “misguided and intolerant” .  The editorial goes on to say that:

“Mr. Christie compounded the insult when he dismissed the Legislature’s support for the rights of gay people as merely “an exercise in theater.” The only one who deserves that accusation is Governor Christie, who is clearly pandering to his own conservative base. “

Seven states in the nation have approved same-sex marriage, including, most recently, Washington.

It is possible that the New Jersey Legislature might overturn Christie’s veto but this would require a two-thirds vote of both houses which will not be easy.

Tony