This morning we posted Rachel Maddow’s takedown of regular MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan over his outrageous comments about race and Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Media Matters has a roundup of Pat’s sordid history on the topic of race.
Watch the segment if you haven’t already:
Turns out there is no shortage of outrage in the blogosphere right now over the fact that MSNBC continues to promote Pat’s outdated and dangerous racial rhetoric. Anger at MSNBC has even bubbled up into grassroots petitions and twitter campaigns, calling on “@MSNBC to Fire Pat Buchanan 4 racist remarks. http://act.ly/9i retweet 2 sign.”
Last night, Firedoglake’s Scarecrow started the grassfire with a post entitled, “Uncle Pat: MSNBC’s Knowing Promotion of White Supremacy and Racial Hatred:”
MSNBC knows that Buchanan has engaged in such racist speech throughout his career. The producers of MSNBC’s political news/commentary shows must be convinced that they can attract more viewers and sell more advertising if they feature an unabashed white supremacist as their featured “conservative” panelist. They don’t care that this must be deeply offensive to huge numbers of Americans; those viewers apparently don’t matter. We don’t matter.
There is no escaping the conclusion that MSNBC has a deliberate policy of promoting racism and white supremacy and that it thinks it’s just fine that Buchanan is deliberately agitating racial hatred by white males against all non-whites (and apparently all women), especially when those non-whites succeed in achieving political power.
Buchanan’s views and the media’s blatant promotion of them are a big part of the reason why racism and racial hostility persist. But legitimizing such attitudes is precisely why we get 5 to 4 Supreme Court decisions pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
What is MSNBC’s excuse for aggressively promoting such hateful views? And why should we continue to watch them?
Greg Sargent reports on Plum Line today:
In case you missed it, Buchanan got into a tussle with Rachel Maddow last night about Sonia Sotomayor. Buchanan said: “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks.”
John Amato was the latest to join in with this sarcastic retort– “Why does MSNBC employ a racist like Pat Buchanan? Because he’s an ‘affirmative action conservative’ talker:”
Pat Buchanan is the affirmative action conservative talker for MSNBC because who’s left to choose from? Michael Savage. The choices they are left with are extreme right wing radio talk show jocks. So the only reason he’s on there airwaves is because they needed to fill that slot. What do you call that, Pat?