MSNBC's Resident Racist

[babylonsister]

Ta-Nehisi Coates
MSNBC's Resident Racist

15 Jul 2009 07:25 pm


It's incredible. I keep telling myself to not be shocked. Pat Buchanan wants access to Sonia Sotomayor's LSAT scores. It's absolutely amazing that this dude has a job on a job, and ultimately, it says a lot about his employers and the people who enjoy his company. After watching the video, it's worth looking into some of Pat's other views. Among them these choice words for black folks:

...no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

There's more if you want to dig. It's amazing to me that people actually sit next to this cat, and have the balls to let the word "postracial" pass across their lips.

Props to Gene Robinson for fighting the fight. I guess I feel like words have their limits. Watch at the end where he just totally breaks down and claims "Everyone graduates summa cum laude from Harvard, now."

Video at link~

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/msnbcs_resident_racist.php

[alsame]

1. MSNBC should just give in and let him

wear the white robe and hood on air.

[Lancer]

2. They're there, you just can't see them!

Just like his brain.

[KharmaTrain]

3. Now Who Is A Reasonable "Conservative"???

I sure don't know too many of them. Maybe P.J. O'Rourke. The rest are racist gasbags thrown in front of the camera to play assclowns and spout talking points. They're best role these days is an example of how shitty things were under rushpublican rule and how out of touch with reality they currently are.

:hi:

[Vinca]

4. By the end of that segment I thought Gene Robinson was wondering

what would happen if he went for Pat's throat.

[Frustratedlady]

7. I thought Gene was struggling to keep from bopping Pat in the nose.

Gene was getting hotter than I've seen him.

[laureloak]

5. There's nothing racist about the comments you posted. n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. ? n/t

[Stephanie]

8. Right, because only black people are poor

Only black people need social services such as welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs. Right?

[TahitiNut]

25. Uh-huh.... and only white people pay for such social programs, too.

:puke:

[mitchum]

29. Thank you...that was the first thing that sprang to mind...

while reading Buchanan's drivel

[checks-n-balances]

9. What??

I think a little clarification is in order!

[tekisui]

10. Huh? American whites have done more than anyone anywhere

to left up blacks? And, the evidence he gives is 'White Americans' have provided welfare for 'blacks'?

You think that he is correct in his framing, and that it is not racist?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. I Always Thought We Lifted Everybody In America Up Because We Were All On The Same Team

without respect to color, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera...

[tekisui]

16. Same here. We all lift up all.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. There's A Lot Of White Folks Benefiting From Those Programs

My mom, god bless her and may she rest in peace, used to work at AFDC. She had first hand experience that hard times fall on all of us...

[rurallib]

12. let's go to the video

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x337799

I was about ready to throw something at the TV

[ixion]

17. uh, yeah, there is

grouping people into 'whites' and 'blacks' is racist by definition. Nice try, though.

[AspenRose]

28. Hmm. No profile.

Interesting.

[Cha]

30. Yeah, there were.

Too bad you can't see it.

[Berry Cool]

11. I don't know how Gene Robinson controlled himself on Hardball yesterday

when Pat was going on and on about how everything Sonia Sotomayor got in life was due to affirmative action and how her grades and test scores in school meant nothing because of grade inflation ("EVERYBODY gets straight A's now!"). Saying that "she had to read CHILDREN'S BOOKS to improve her English!" And then...and THEN...when Tweety tried to say "But look at how you feel about Sarah Palin!" he said that Sarah Palin was an ACCOMPLISHED person who EARNED everything she got IN HER OWN RIGHT... (Yep. He didn't even imply she might have benefited from affirmative action favoring females. Sarah earned it all, with no help from anyone.)

I was just sitting there jaw-dropped. He was promoting that mediocre quitter over someone who had to work and struggle and fight for everything she had or might get.

That was when I had to give up and remind myself: Pat Buchanan's brain doesn't run on the facts. It runs on ideology. And racism.

[rurallib]

14. I continue to be amazed that this guy has access to national TV

to spout his racism. While this was one of the most blatant, it was hardly the first. Yet he is trotted out night after night.

[Chemisse]

20. At one point he seemed to be saying that the fact that Gene was helped

Meant some white person had to lose out. He got cut off, but I was pretty shocked that he was so far out on the racist limb.

It seems that he thinks that white people innately deserve promotions, scholarships, etc. and that any time somebody of color gets it, it means a white person lost the spot.

It must be very strange to have a mind that thinks that way.

[PA Democrat]

22. Uncle Pat complains about immigrants not learning English and then RIDICULES

Sotomayor for her efforts to improve her grasp of the language.

When Tweety asked him if he knew what her high school GPA was (she was class valedictorian), he replied "I don't care."

When it was mentioned that she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, Buchanon complained that "everyone" at Princeton is given good grades.

Pat Buchanan's RACISM prevents him from acknowledging any of Sotomayor's accomplishments. Apparently, in his twisted bigoted little pea brain, if you are a minority, every teacher, every professor will automatically give you the highest grades. Any effort to improve yourself deserves ridicule and contempt.

Pat Buchanan is a racist. The poster above who commented that they didn't see anything racist in his remarks needs to watch the video and rethink this.

[caraher]

13. What were Pat's SAT scores?

High school GPA?

Oh wait, he's white and therefore we can assume he is where he is today entirely on merit... :puke:

Could you imagine if anyone had asked what Clarence Thomas scored on the LSAT? I remember a LOT of questions about Thomas, whose intellect (IMO) was far more suspect than Sotomayer's, yet it seemed those questions were based on what he did in his career and dealings with Anita Hill and not irrelevancies like test scores before starting law school.

After all, isn't the bottom line what she did AFTER receiving her law degree? And suppose the scores were bad - what would that prove anyway? Isn't the measure of her qualifications her career as a judge?

Damn, there I go again pretending rational thought had anything whatever to do with the subjects of RW bluster...

[Pacifist Patriot]

19. Amazing to think that Roger Mudd and Pat Robertson share the same alma mater.

Oddly enough, when I was in school the rumor was that Robertson didn't really graduate but had to leave early because he had knocked up his girlfriend. Interesting story because it is fairly easy to debunk and being such a conservative bastion of education I would have expected him to be an icon rather than a pariah. He was definitely a frat-party animal and admits as much. I'd really like to see that diploma of his because the idea of him graduating magna cum laude from W&L is just too much to swallow.

[newportdadde]

21. Pat's problem is that he projects what really bothers him off into tangents like this.

Listening to Pat Buchanan over the years I think his real issue, the issue that gets him mad is really lack of blue collar jobs, manufacturing jobs etc. On this issue he will argue against lunatic conservatives and can almost sound like an old time Republican.

The problem is that Pat then looks for a reason and for some reason he keeps going off into racist tangents. From time to time he will open his eyes and go after the real bad guys, corporations, its not often but it does happen. I guess talking up bullshit like that keeps him on TV so maybe thats why he does it I don't know.

[lunatica]

23. He's operating from the false premise that blacks would punish white men

by enslaving them or otherwise treating them as they've treated everyone who isn't a white male.

Pat's from the old school of Male Chauvinism. He just can't get past that. He's stuck in the mid Twentieth Century. Always has been and always will be.

Oh! And white heterosexual men have never done more for anyone except themselves. Every single advancement minorities have gotten has been by fighting for their rights and ultimately winning them. Most of those fights went on for a century or two before they were 'given' by whites.

[PA Democrat]

24. Buchanan was suspended from Georgetown University for one year

for assaulting a police officer. Can you imagine what he'd say if Sotomayor had such a record?

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Br-Ca/Buchanan-Pat.html

Buchanan attended a Catholic elementary and high school, following in the steps of his father and brothers. Deciding to stay in Washington and to continue at a Catholic school, he enrolled in Georgetown University in 1956, studying for a degree in English. In his senior year he received a traffic ticket. Believing that his ticket was wrongfully given, he verbally and physically assaulted the police. He was then arrested and fined, and the incident left him with a minor police record. The university also suspended him for a year.


My research didn't yield any information of Buchanan's academic career other than the fact that he earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown and a masters in journalism from Columbia. I suppose his excuse for his lack of academic awards for outstanding achievement would be that all the minority students were "given" the best grades.

[Z_I_Peevey]

26. I caught the part the DVR snags before KO,

and I too was bumfuzzled by the blatant racism. Poor Eugene Robinson couldn't overcome his politeness to do the overtalking, overshouting thing the Pubs do so blatantly and rudely.

[whopis01]

27. as my grandmother used to say "That's mighty white of them" n/t