Well, what do you suppose Pat Buchanan would have to say to get his sorry ass fired by MSNBC?

by Ken

We need to talk about the latest installment in Rachel Maddow's ongoing exploration of the ever-stranger connections emanating from the now-infamous C Street "church" of the Famlly, along with the ranking guide into the Family sanctum, Jeff Sharlet (whom she now has to apologize to profusely for dragging him away from his hoped-for vacation, as the story just won't stop metastasizing).

We'll get to that, but first I guess we really need to talk about another segment on Rachel's show last night: Pat Buchanan's appalling attempt to defend his column attacking Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom he has taken to ridiculing as "an affirmative-action judge." Of course, to appreciate the full measure of viciousness intended, you have to understand that in the lunar landscape that is Pat Buchanan's brain, "affirmative action" is nothing more than a piece of the massive plot -- watch out, the plotters are everywhere! -- to cheat white males, the very people who made America what it is, out of their rightful share of the pie, which is all of it.

(And he is only too happy to rattle off the list of names of the white male victims, even if he can't pronounce the name of the sainted Frank Ricci -- I guess those Irishmen have trouble with Eye-talian names), and it seemed to me that a woman slipped onto the list of white males. Let's not even get into the questions of whether a program of systematic discrimination can actually be conducted against a nation's power elite, or whether a class of victims whose names can be recited in one breath by the craziest of crazy old coots really qualifies as, for want of a better term, a "class action.")

Rachel is taking some heat for her remarkable efforts at maintaining her poise, and even I sometimes wished at times that she would "lose it." But of course if she'd done that, she would have handed the even to Pat, who may be an old coot now but who has been fighting these fights for a lot of decades now, and knows that as soon as you reduce the opposition to enraged spluttering, you've won.

Anyway, Heather over at Crooks and LIars had the patience to do a point-by-point summation with commentary of this sad and sordid interview. I was in no condition to observe the spectacle closely enough to do so even if I had been inclined. I hadn't planned to watch it, and wish I'd stuck to my (sensible) original intention. It drove me storming around my apartment in -- what else? -- a spluttering rage.

Here's Heather's account:

During what was at times a bit of a heated exchange, but way too chummy in general -- given the type of browbeating Pat Buchanan actually deserves for his continued racist remarks on MSNBC -- Rachel Maddow ends up telling Pat Buchanan to quit living in the 1950s, and that he's fanning the flames of racial hatred with his rhetoric. Before that, she gives him ample opportunity to put on full display, again, just how horribly he thinks the poor, downtrodden white man is being treated in America.

Some of Pat’s "finer" moments during the interview.

-- Comparing Sonia Sotomayor to Harriet Miers.

-- Calling her a purely affirmative action candidate by the President and completely dismissing her academic accomplishments.

-- Saying that “white folks” built this country.

-- Calling Bork and Scalia “real scholars” and "tremendous minds" and saying Sotomayor hasn’t risen to their level.

-- Saying the only reason she was appointed to the bench was because of affirmative action.

-- Complaining about Sotomayor getting a chance to go to the best schools and knocking out someone who might have gotten better grades than her. When has Pat Buchanan ever complained about the likes of George Bush and other legacy children being allowed into the best schools because of who their parents are, and knocking other kids out? I would guess he has not. I’ve certainly never heard him bring it up. Rachel should have called him on that one if he'd let her get a word in to do it.

When asked if she got the grades she did in college because of affirmative action, saying that in the Ivy League schools, half the kids graduate cum laude now. Really? So they're raising students' grade point averages in college now and no one told the rest of us about it? Then retreating to saying he bet he graduated higher in his high school class than she did, and going so far as to say he probably did better than she did in college as well, but he doesn't think he's qualified to be on the Supreme Court.

So being a judge for seventeen years doesn't count for anything in Pat's world. And Pat says he did better than she did in school, without backing that up with any specifics. If anyone knows just what his grade point averages were in high school and college, I'd like to find out.

He compared the track team at the Olympics potentially being all black or a hockey team being all white to the racial make up of the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing, Pat. He seems to have forgotten that there was a time not all that long ago that blacks in America were not even allowed to play on the same team as white people.

And he refused to say there is anything wrong with the fact that the Supreme Court has been made up almost entirely of white men for all these years and might benefit from other races being represented. He dodged back opining over the firemen they trotted out there as a political game at the hearing rather than answer the question.

I really don't understand why Rachel felt the need to bring him on if she was going to let him lie and talk over her for the better part of the interview. She's just not aggressive enough to deal with the likes of this bully, and he knows it. MSNBC has allowed Buchanan to become a racist sideshow on their network. As Media Matters has wondered: What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?

Now that, Heather, is a splendid question. What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?

For the record, MediaMatters' Jamison Foser didn't write the piece to which she directs us in response to last night's Rachel Maddow appearance. He wrote it on June 8.

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