Semantical Mumbo Jumbo…

The Daily Caller’s Jeff Poor writes about Pat Buchanan’s appearance on The Hugh Hewitt show Monday where Buchanan says he doesn’t know anything about being suspended…

But in an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Monday night, Buchanan said the issues were medical.

“Well, you know I’ve had some medical issues at the end of the year which were pretty problematic, and so I’ve sort of been out of speaking and things like that,” he said. “I’ve started back writing the column in December, and I’ve got the column going. I’m doing ‘McLaughlin Group.’ But we haven’t gotten up on MSNBC.”

Some reports have suggested MSNBC suspended Buchanan, but he pled ignorance and said he hoped to get back up to speed this month.

“On Drudge Report, somebody said I’ve been suspended,” Buchanan said. “I don’t know anything about that. I hope to get back full up here in January, but I’ve been out for a couple of months.”

One of the great fallacies of this Pat Buchanan saga is that he ever got suspended. Nobody on MSNBC’s end has ever characterized what happened with Pat as a “suspension”. Some people just seized upon his enforced absence and thought, “Aha! He’s been suspended!” In the cable news lexicon “suspension” is more of a legal term used to justify some further action. David Shuster got suspended. Mark Halperin got suspended. Keith Olbermann got suspended. Joe Scarborough got suspended. And they were all called suspensions. MSNBC doesn’t have to do an official suspension to keep Pat off the air. All it has to do is tell its bookers not to call him.

So Pat is basically accurate in saying that he doesn’t know anything about a suspension because there was no suspension. Pat is also telling the truth that he’s been sick and it may be that had MSNBC not decided to keep him off the air he wouldn’t have been able to go on the air anyways. But that would amount to a coincidence and Pat’s being a wee bit disingenuous because suspension or no, sickness or no, Pat was told by Phil Griffin that they weren’t going to have him on the air in support of his book. And Phil Griffin at the TCA has said that the issue has now morphed from Pat’s book to Pat’s views. You can’t lay all that on an illness.

The suspension issue is a straw man erected by some over-zealous writers and ideologues who read too much into what was going on. The issue is, regardless of his health, Pat’s off the air because of his views and his book. Everything else is extraneous information and semantical mumbo jumbo.