Weilerblog

In the  comments of my last post, MODI wrote that Buchana’s “long history of racism and antisemitism should disqualify him from being a regularly scheduled voice.”

On cue, Media Matter’s Jamison Foser writes a piece today titled:  “What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?”

Foser offers a long compendium of Buchanan’s greatest hits, some of which I had not seen before and are truly astonishing.

For example:

In 1990, Buchanan managed to find a way to feel gloomy about the release of Nelson Mandela and the prospect of majority rule in South Africa:

[I]t is difficult to share the wild enthusiasm about the news that Nelson Mandela will be released, that South Africa, too, may soon enjoy the blessings of “majority rule.”

[...]

Exactly, why are we celebrating the unbanning of an African National Congress whose leaders are addicted to the very Marxist ideas that ruined every African country where they have been tried?

Comes the answer: Because we stand for democracy! Because white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong!

But, where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this. They did not give the Indians, who were still living a tribal existence, the right to vote us out of North America. When they created the Republic, they restricted the franchise to property-owning males, believing that not every man was qualified to rule, nor every people prepared for self-government. If the past 30 years [of African history] taught us nothing else, it has surely taught us that.

And how about this one:

Last year, Buchanan suggested that slavery worked out pretty well for “black folks”:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Again, that was just last year. And Buchanan went on to argue that “no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans,” an assertion he supported with a laundry list of government programs that, though he didn’t mention this part, he spent his career opposing. Nor did he mention the inconvenient fact of his opposition to integration.

Instead, the man who once wrote in a memo to Richard Nixon that “integration of blacks and whites … is less likely to result in accommodation than it is in perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed consciously by government side by side with the capable,” now argues that African-Americans are insufficiently grateful for the gifts white America has given them, starting with slavery.

Foser notes that his long bill of particulars, which includes extreme homophobia, egregious anti-immigrant bigotry and flirtations with Holocaust denial literature, “barely scratches the surface,” which makes it especially extraordinary that:

MSNBC trots him out to discuss race and gender issues, as though the views he represents are needed for “balance.” And so MSNBC viewers are treated to the bizarre spectacle of Pat Buchanan loudly insisting that everyone else is a racist. Sonia Sotomayor? Racist. Harry Reid? Racist. Eric Holder? Displays “almost paralyzing stupidity” in talking about race.

After the recent murder of George Tiller, Keith Olbermann, who has long highlighted Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculousness, said it was time to boycott FOX in general and O’Reilly in particular - that enough was enough. Olbermann specifically promised to stop referring to O’Reilly, who had repeated lyagitated for extremist actions against Tiller.

So it’s worth asking: when will Olbermann, or Maddow, say enough is enough about their own employer’s indulgence of Pat Buchanan.

Tags: MSNBC, Pat Buchanan, racism

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.