As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it- whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.
- Harper Lee
If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.
- Adolf Hitler
For the longest time now, I’ve wondered how an unabashed racist like Pat Buchanan managed to keep his on-air gig at MSNBC. It was hard to fathom, especially when you consider that virtually anyone else who said what he has would have been forced to resign in shame. Not only has Buchanan been both emboldened and enriched by his overt racism, for a time he seemed to make racism almost mainstream.
Finally and thankfully, it seems that Buchanan’s bosses at MSNBC have somewhat belatedly tripped over the not-so-very-well-camouflaged racist slime trail Buchanan’s left over the years. It’s not even as if Buchanan was making a concerted effort at subtlety. Always proud of calling things as he sees them, Buchanan has been spewing his overt racism for years. Given that he kept his job, a reasonable person would have to assume that MSNBC condoned Buchanan’s racist and misogynistic bleatings. NOW they’re feigning surprise that the man’s a racist?
OMIGOD!! PAT BUCHANAN’S A RACIST?? I HAD NO IDEA!! HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED??
The group Color of Change has been waging an ongoing campaign against Buchanan since his latest provocatively racist book was published. (There is a chapter entitled “The End of White America.” There is another chapter called “The White Party.” Those are two separate chapters.) Yesterday, the Daily Caller reports, the group emailed its members to tell them that “MSNBC President Phil Griffin just confirmed that Buchanan is suspended indefinitely because some of his ideas aren’t ‘appropriate for national dialogue on MSNBC.’” Buchanan gave an appropriately outrageous quote in response.
The idea that MSNBC is only now determining that Buchanan’s racism and misogyny isn’t “appropriate for national dialogue on MSNBC” is, of course, total crap. MSNBC has tolerated and enabled Buchanan’s hatefulness for years. For some reason, MSNBC’s senior management is suddenly cognizant of the negative PR associated with having an unabashed racist postulating about the threat to and decline of White America. Does Buchanan have to rant about the Zionist Occupation Government before his White supremacist ideology becomes impossible to ignore?
I have no problem with MSNBC trying to maintain something they can represent as ideological balance. To the degree that it’s done within reason, attempting to create balance is a good and laudable thing. That doesn’t mean that racism and misogyny disguised as Conservative ideals is something that a national news outlet should be promoting, however.
His ideas have never been “appropriate for national dialogue,” if you consider raw racism to be inappropriate for that purpose. If, on the other hand, you want our national dialogue to be wide-ranging and to embrace the entire range of crazies (and it should), then Pat Buchanan is completely appropriate, as a spokesman for the enemy.
Either way, Pat Buchanan’s views have not evolved in the past 30 years. MSNBC knew exactly what it was getting when it hired Pat Buchanan long, long ago: a smiling guy who looks like one of your grandfather’s breakfast buddies who is good at doing TV political talk shows and is a big, big racist. MSNBC is not separating from Pat Buchanan (momentarily) because of his views. They knew all about those already. It just happens to be a touchy time for cable political networks, PR-wise.
I frankly don’t care if Buchanan’s views have evolved in the past 30- or 300- years. He has a right in a free society to believe as he sees fit, but that doesn’t mean that MSNBC needs to be condoning and promoting Buchanan’s bombastic knuckle-dragging. He even has the right to accuse “militant gay rights groups” and Van Jones of being behind his being “disappeared” from MSNBC…and we have the right to laugh at his absurd, desperate stab in the dark. It’s time for Buchanan to crawl back under the rock he shares with people like David Duke.
Stay KKKlassy, Pat!!
