(Image Source: Southern Avenger)

BY ALLIE SPILLYARDS

“Blacklisted” — That’s conservative commentator Pat Buchanan’s cry after getting the boot from what he calls – left-leaning MSNBC.

“Your brother is in the witness protection program. Patrick Buchanan has disappeared from the face of the Earth. Is he in Arizona? I heard he’s under the name Lucy Addal.” (VIDEO SOURCE: Fox News)

The controversy’s centered around the former GOP presidential candidate’s new book – “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Critics called it “racist” and “anti-Semitic,” and petitioned MSNBC to end Buchanan’s contract after his lengthy disappearance from air.

In an op-ed for The American Conservative, Buchanan responds, writing...

“My four-months' absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.”

But didn’t anyone see this coming? The New York Times Brian Stelter suggests — this shouldn’t be a surprise.

“When he was hired at MSNBC in 2002... the channel called itself ‘fiercely independent’ and had no clear political tilt. But in the last few years the channel has leaned to the left, particularly in prime time, causing Mr. Buchanan to seem more and more like an outlier.”

And an opinion writer for the Baltimore Sun goes one step further, suggesting the network’s better off without him.

“The more he snarled and the closer her came to hate speech, the more he confirmed the worst stereotypes that liberals believed about the right.”

According to a writer for the Daily Beast...

“As a cable news commentator, you serve at the pleasure of management. And MSNBC (which put out a we-wish-him-well statement) was no longer pleased by Buchanan. Next stop, Fox News?”

But a blogger for Newsday’s not so sure that a move is in Buchanan’s immediate future.

“Fox would then have to pick up the cudgel that MSNBC refused to - that his book... is not racist or anti-Semitic. That may be too much of a distraction, and so the flip side is also equally possible - that Buchanan's long association with TV dating back nearly to the Nixon presidency, may well have come to an end. (Again, to cover bets here - for the moment.)”