Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan was one of the architects and chief purveyors of Richard Nixon's polarizing Southern Strategy to exploit racial animosity among white voters towards "uppity" minorities. Buchanan was an advisor and speech writer to Richard Nixon.
As a candidate for political office (he ran for president twice), and as a political commmentator, Patrick J. Buchanan has a long record of overtly racist and sexist statements. He is an unreformed Southern segregationist.
So it should come as no surprise that with the election of the first African-American president, and now the nomination of the first Hispanic judge to the former all-white boys club of the U.S. Supreme Court, Patrick J. Buchanan is apoplectic. His world of white privilege threatened, he has become the voice of white grievance.
Patrick J. Buchanan is once again exorting Republicans to embrace the Southern Strategy, yearning for the glory days of his youth when his pitchfork brigades waged a war of racial animosity and division in America. The American Conservative » How to Handle Sotomayor:
What they must do is expose Sotomayor, as they did not in the case of Ginsburg, as a political activist whose career bespeaks a lifelong resolve to discriminate against white males to the degree necessary to bring about an equality of rewards in society.
Sonia is, first and foremost, a Latina. She has not hesitated to demand, even in college and law school, ethnic and gender preferences for her own. Her concept of justice is race-based.
Sorry, Pat. It is your view of the world which has always been colored race-based white privilege. This unreformed Southern segregationist is a throwback to the dark days of our past, and is an enbarrassing relic today.
So why does MSNBC employ this racist Patrick J. Buchanan? His commentary on the Sotomayor hearing on Wednesday's edition of Harball, largely based upon his article above, was so over-the-top that I thought Eugene Robinson was about to come out of his seat. Of course, his friend and apologist Chris Matthews, also given to off-color comments bordering on racist and sexist, defended him.
Chris Matthews incessantly goes on and on about Pennsylvania and how he views himself as an expert on blue collar Reagan Democrats in Pennsylvania. (He was proven spectacularly wrong in the last election when he predicted Reagan Democrats would not vote for Obama – they did; they are just Democrats.). It was James Carville who once quipped that "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle." I get the distinct impression that Chris Matthews hails from "Alabama in the middle," hence his affinity for his racist friend Patrick J. Buchanan.
Neither man does MSNBC proud. But there is no good reason on God's green Earth why MSNBC continues to employ the overtly racist Patrick J. Buchanan. This is the 21st Century, not 1950's segregated America. I don't care that he is Chris Matthews' friend, MSNBC should fire Patrick J. Buchanan. He is an insult to the intelligence of the network's viewers, and a glaring embarrassment to the network.
Note: Patrick J. Buchanan will be a guest on the Rachel Maddow Show on Thursday evening to defend his comments on Wednesday's edition of Hardball. There is no defense for his sowing the seeds of racial animosity in America today. America has evolved beyond its ignominious past on race. Patrick J. Buchanan has not.
UPDATE: H/t to Daily Kos for this post What would white people do… without Pat Buchanan defending them from the oppression of the minority?
And to remind people why Buchanan has been unhinged about Sotomayor all week:
We’re going to have 135 million Hispanics in the United States by 2050, heavily concentrated in the southwest. The question is whether we’re going to survive as a country.
He sees Sotomayor — heck, any brown person really — as a threat to his beloved White America's very survival.
Pat Buchanan is living proof that MSNBC doesn't want Fox News to have a monopoly on racists.
The question is "why?" MSNBC, fire Patrick J. Buchanan.