Let’s Escalate the Tucker Carlson Debate to Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan is a nice guy, good man and perceptive political analyst. He is also the person who appears to get more airtime than any other analyst on MSBNC. He is also a political extremist far outside the mainstream view of Americans who plays on anger, hate and rage whether he intends
to or not.

The issue on the table is: Should Pat Buchanan be the most visible analyst voice on any cable network? Or should he be one voice among many, but a voice whose exposure is far in excess of what his extremist views and appeal to the broader market would justify?

Pat Buchanan is a voice dominated by anger, rage and hysteria about immigration, to put it mildly. His opinions on this are outside the American heartland; his is an extremist view that takes a concern shared by many to extremes shared by relatively view.

Regarding my answer to my colleague Peter Fenn, for whom I have enormous admiration and respect: Peter, your dispute is not with me, but with the audience that rejects Tucker Carlson’s show by giving anemic and pathetic ratings.

One may agree or disagree with my view here, but I am speaking for the huge audience that refuses to watch his show. I am speaking for the huge audience that feels unrepresented, insulted, demeaned or ignored on his show and others. I am speaking for those who take their business elsewhere.

If I were Tucker Carlson, his producers and his corporate managers at MSNBC, I would give heartfelt thought about WHY his show is so low-rated.  If he is canceled, as I predict he will be unless something very dramatically changes, it is not because of me, it is because of the people I speak for, who feel ignored or insulted and refuse to watch.

The censorship is not by me, it is by Tucker, whose vision for the show is his platform to opine, often insultingly, aiming sarcastic or demeaning comments at those he disapproves of, without giving voice to the far larger number of people who disagree with him.

Looking beyond Tucker to the cable industry as a whole, the entire authentic progressive movement is virtually unrepresented, and the one MSNBC host who speaks to them, Keith Olbermann, is at the top of their ratings.

Blacks are underrepresented. And Hispanics are under-represented. And union members, average workers, millions of people facing the danger of layoffs, outsourced jobs and downsizing are under-represented. Women are dramatically under-represented in the host lineup through the industry. Military families are largely unrepresented, except for very rare guests, and the huge swatch of Middle America fearing foreclosure on their homes are treated as non-persons and unrepresented.

And far too often, those who may fit these demographic or ideological groups who appear on these shows are merely Washington insiders, who speak for Washington insiders, speak to Washington insiders, and whose main frame of reference about the real America is what they believe the real America is supposed to think, according to them.

People may demean and ridicule the more progressive Internet news and content sites, but Tucker’s audience is miniscule compared to the audience of the most credible if hard-edged Internet news and content sites and progressive talk-radio hosts such as Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller.

Mark Karlin and Buzzflash.com, Rob Kall and Opednews.com, Bob Parry and Consortiumnews.com, Jeff Tiedrich and Smirkingchimp.com, Carolyn Kay and Makethemaccountable.com and many  others; “The Randi Rhodes Show,” “The Stephanie Miller Show”; the people I reach, through columns in The Hill newspaper, and through this site, other sites and talk radio — all of us, put together, have huge reach to large numbers of people. Any of us, individually, reaches far more people Than Tucker. None of us, collectively, even exist in Tucker’s show and many other shows that have miniscule ratings, are destined for cancellation and offer boring content that is bad television and bad ratings.

The censorship is from those who exclude this vast audience, which tends to support Keith and almost unanimously rejects Tucker because he ranges from being contemptuous and demeaning about this audience to merely treating it as though it does not exist.

This is not insult business, it is show business, and the smart move, the better-quality show business, the higher-ratings show business, is to give these vast audiences the respect their numbers, ratings power, buying power and profitability power deserve.

Pat Buchanan has his place, but should his anger and rage on immigration receive such huge visiblity, while blacks, and Hispanics, and foreclosed-upon homeowners and those fearing foreclosure, and women who are not insiders, and the huge numbers of union workers and average workers, and almost the totality of the heartland progressive movement in the United States be almost 100 percent censored out, and insulted, on a daily basis?

These are questions that management at General Electric, Time Warner and, I predict, even News Corp are giving very serious consideration to, as I write and you read these words.