'Crossfire' Redux

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When NBC Universal/ Today Show wunderkind Jeff Zucker took the helm of CNN (see "TUOL" post 11/30/12), he promised fresh programming and a Prime Time shake-up of the cable news network mired in poor ratings (see "TUOL" posts 5/3/12, 3/30/10).

According to a story by mediabistro.com's TV Newser blog, cutting-edge tv apparently means reviving Crossfire (Crossfire 2.0?), the political debate program that anchored CNN for more than two decades before it was cancelled in January 2005.

The TV Newser item about the political gabfest announced the talking heads who will appear on the program. On the political right will be S.E. Cupp, currently on MSNBC's The Cycle and a contributor to The Blaze, and Georgia's own perennially unsuccessful GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a veteran of Congress and marriage. On the left, will be one-time Obama White House adviser Van Jones and former Obama campaign consultant Stephanie Cutler. The audience, meanwhile, will likely be on Fox, MSNBC and the Food Network.

Buchanan Indefinitely Suspended by MSNBC

Image by FlickrPhotosAccount via FlickrConservative firebrand commentator Pat Buchanan, 73, has been indefinitely suspended by MSNBC, according to the cable news station's president, Bill Griffin.

Buchanan hasn't appeared on MSNBC since October. Although he told talk radio bloviators Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity in separate appearances that his absence was attributable to medical problems (excessive bile, perhaps?), Poynter.org, The Huffington Post and other media outlets reported the underlying reason may be a chapter in Buchanan's latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, entitled The Death of White America, that suggests the nation's European core has been overrun by immigrants.

Griffin was quoted on Poynter.org as branding some of Buchanan's ideas "[not] appropriate for national dialogue on MSNBC." Apparently, Griffin either experienced the slowest epiphany on record about Buchanan, or like most of the nation, doesn't watch MSNBC programming regularly.

Since Griffin's announcement, Buchanan complained he is the target of a smear campaign by activist Van Jones and his group, Color of Change, as well as the Anti-Defamation League and the Human Rights Campaign.

Buchanan served under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and three times sought the presidency, in 1992 and 1996 as a GOP candidate, and in 2000, heading the Reform Party ticket. He was the original host of CNN's Crossfire, and co-founded The American Conservative magazine in 2002.
He has come under fire on numerous occasions for alleged insensitivity to people of color, as well as for alleged anti-Semitism and downplaying of the Holocaust.

The hard-working staff of "TUOL" always associates Buchanan with the late columnist Molly Ivins, who commented on the so-called "Culture War" speech Buchanan delivered at the GOP National Convention in 1992, quipping that it "probably sounded  better in the original German."