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Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
Pat Buchanan Thinks White Men Deserve So Much More

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Mediahohoho
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
I thought that we built this city on rock and roll.
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FormerEnglishMajor
07/21/09

@Mediahohoho: damn you....now I have that POS going through my head......
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Edited by FormerEnglishMajor at 07/21/09 12:16 PM FormerEnglishMajor was starred

ArleenCookies
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
It seems to me that Sonia Sotomayor is a shining example of how AA is supposed to work. Sure, affirmative action may have helped her get into Princeton and Yale, and also may have helped her pay for the education, however, Justice Sotomayor still had to do the work to graduate at the top of her class and receive the honors she received. She still had to practice law exceptionally well to become a judge in the first place, and she still had to judge in a consistent and reasoned manner in order to be named to the 2nd circuit and now to the Supreme Court. In other words, affirmative action doesn't mean that the individual in question is somehow absolved of doing any of the hard work to get ahead, but rather gives them the opportunity to excel when they might not have had it in the first place. For centuries we squandered the intelligence and industriousness of underprivileged men and women, and affirmative action is one way, maybe imperfect, but a way nonetheless to tap into the vast unused potential within this country. I hope that one day we won't need affirmative action, but after watching the hearings I sadly realize we aren't there yet.
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maddoxhair
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
i have to take issue with some of the finer points. e.g. for yale law review to say that sotomayor's appointment having something to do with affirmative action is buchannan's "opinion" is not really a refutation of his statement. ideally, i would like to see this taken further. as constructed, this was a bit of a stretch, and this and a few other minor points weren't really necessary to make the obvious point, that pat buchannan is a buffoon.

HOWEVER, big picture, buchannan, despite his credentials, merits, experiences, insights etc. (let's give the devil his due), really screwed the pooch on this one and maddow called him out on it eloquently.

i think i'm in love
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thefilth
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
I think the thing that gets lost in Affirmative Action discussions is the acknowledgment that minorities rarely have any network in the job market.

My brother in law is ready to get into his field, having completed his education and the family quickly composed a list of contacts of people that would hire him because of their personal relationship.

I don't have that or anything like that. In my family, I'm only the second person to have finished my college education. My parents didn't pay for it, I worked in a factory and got some grants. I couldn't find work, and when I did, I was usually immediately mistrusted by some members of the staff.

At one job, in my first week, I overheard some employees saying they didn't trust me and wouldn't work for me. Most critics don't anything about going through this.
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TomRegan
07/21/09

@thefilth:

Couldn't that be a socio-economic difference rather than a race one?
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allyzay
07/21/09

@TomRegan: Of course socio-economics are involved, but minorities are more disproportionately affected by socio-economic disadvantages overall.
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MissNormaDesmond
07/21/09

@TomRegan: Huh? Why is it important to you to split hairs in this way? The point is that race and SES are interrelated.
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BernadetteHb
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
When I worked for a southern newspaper in the late 1970s, the company repeatedly refused to hire black reporters, even if they were the most qualified applicants, saying a black reporter could not do the job in their community. That's the sort of thing Affirmative Action helped redress.
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Thornton
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
I loved almost every second of it, but I feel like she probably should have waited for him to be on the show to bring up the old Nixon memo. It's only fair to ask a white supremicist to respond to charges that he's a hypocrite and a know-nothing liar.
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htotheomo
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
Rachel Maddow's kind of talk has no place in politics.

Brava.
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jccalhoun
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
I don't know how Buchanan gets on national television. The guy is a known racist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Buchanan#Racial_issues
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HurtsSoGood
07/21/09

@jccalhoun: It's called balance. If you don't have it, the howling right-wing monkeys will scream and scream and not shut up until you cry uncle, or you lose all your sponsors. Note that only right-wing monkeys can pull this off because they can pull lots of corporate $$$ to build and maintain an infrastructure of whining for this purpose.

So you are compelled to keep a few of these people like Pat Buchanan around. Pat is a good one to have because he once actually ran for President, actually worked in at least one Republican administration, and can usually not sound like a complete loon, that is, if he works hard at it.

Other talking heads on the same network are loath to call Pat out on his BS, Keith Olbermann being chief among them. KO will rip on Rush Limbaugh (EIB), or Sean Hannity (Fox), or Glenn Beck (Fox), or others like them, as long as they're not MSNBC people. Thus, Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough are off limits. Rachael Maddow broke this rule, and I'm sure if her show wasn't pulling decent ratings, and Pat wasn't already getting heat from without, she'd get called on the carpet for it. Still, it took some serious stones to do what she did. Brava.
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idabwells
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
I think a lot of people miss the point of affirmative action. The fact that you as one person or your family never owned slaves is not the point. A debt is due that really can't be paid back but some justice would be nice. Read the book titled "When Affirmative Action was White" it painfully brings insight into this subject.
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goetz
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
God I love this woman.
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goetz
07/21/09

@goetz: I HAVE A STAR!? I guess I have to keep the inane commenting to a minimum now.
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FormerEnglishMajor
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
Cajun. Thank you for posting this. I've never watched Rachel Maddow before, but damn. That segment was powerful and intelligent. Finding Mr. "Anti Affirmative Action" Buchanan's memo to Nixon to "hire more Catholics" and putting it up on screen was brilliant. I hope more people click on this one.
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Lord Humongous
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
There are no perfect choices in an imperfect world. A meritocracy would be the closest thing to a perfect choice, but, we won't address the issues of inner-city schools and their problems and the associated dominos that keep falling, all the way through to institutions of higher education. For example, I am a college professor-I teach mathematics. Why am I still having to teach basic math, like adding fractions? This is a multi-generational problem that will take 20 years to fix, once we actually begin to address it seriously.
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ShravantiElephino
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
it shocks me how sotomayer's accomplishments are being so sidelined. for buchanan to say that everyone in the ivy league graduates with honors? 1) that's not true and 2) sotomayor graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa and she won the pyne prize. this hardly happens - not everyone in the ivy graduates in the top 3% by definition! moreover, the pyne is the highest undergraduate award given by princeton - basically for someone who is academically outstanding and did incredible extracurricurals, etc. i cannot believe how her accomplishments are being questioned - truly disgusting.
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ChillbearLatrigue
07/21/09

@ShravantiElephino: I agree. Whatever my misgivings may be she is an extraordinarily intelligent woman.
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SidAndFinancy
07/21/09

@ShravantiElephino:

"The Faculty of Arts and Sciences made this [2005] change after a year of evaluating grading and honors in the College. That study found that over 90% of all Harvard graduates received honors degrees. The Faculty was concerned that such a high percentage of honors degrees lessened the value of the honors designation. In particular, many faculty members and students reported that the magna degree was coming to be the expected norm for students completing honors requirements in their concentrations, and that the designation of cum laude was no longer seen as recognizing distinguished work."

http://www.college.harvard.edu/academics/resources/honors_faqs.html
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SidAndFinancy
07/21/09

@SidAndFinancy: Not as bad at other ivies, but still excessive at most, according to the Boston Globe: Dartmouth, 40 percent; Yale, 51 percent; Princeton, 44 percent; Brown, 42 percent; Columbia, 25 percent; and Cornell, 8 percent.

http://nl.newsbank.com/cgi-bin/ngate/BG?ext_docid=0F3009FEC3B4F7E9&ext_hed=HARVARD CONSIDERS OVERHAUL OF GRADING&ext_theme=bg&pubcode=BG
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spindle
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
that's gonna leave a mark.
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Magister
07/21/09

@spindle: PB generally loves the camera, but I don't know that he'll be tripping over himself to get back on RM's show. Of course that's probably a good thing, since she appears to want to raise the discourse.
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haidn
07/21/09

In reply to Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Pat Buchanan Again
The question of affirmative action for me is whether one thinks society must begin to right the wrongs of racial inequality from the top down or from the bottom up. That is, do we as a society focus first on diversifying our upper echelons (colleges, courts, etc.), or rather on improving the quality of, for example, inner-city schools so that affirmative action can be more quickly phased out for a meritocracy?
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momof3wildkids
07/21/09

@haidn: You raise an excellent point about improving the schools. To me, it makes so much more sense to put our investments there vs programs that may be reverse discrimination. I'd prefer AA programs that give people the chance to compete for jobs, scholarships, etc equally. Personally, I would find it insulting to earn a scholarship, get a job because of something other than my own efforts/results.

I imagine AA proponents would claim that we are losing a generation or two if education is where we truly focused our AA efforts.
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HurtsSoGood
07/21/09

@momof3wildkids: People who rip on AA should take an introductory Human Resources Management course at their local community college. They would find that AA is intended to be exactly as you describe, and those who make it something else do not understand accepted HR practices. It isn't about promoting unqualified people at all. It's about giving equally qualified people who happen to be members of an often-oppressed minority group a break in the name of diversity.
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momof3wildkids
07/21/09

@HurtsSoGood: If you read the link that Charlie Browns posted, it claims that AA does and SHOULD take away some privilege that white (men mostly) have. That is what I was referring to in my comment.
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
07/21/09

@haidn: i say we do both -- open opportunities across the board, and see that all schools have all the supplies, good teacher/student ratios, buildings, playgrounds and libraries that all children deserve

poor white kids are screwed, but in a different way than even upwardly mobile minorities

irish people and italians were treated as trash when they came to this country, but graduated to the status of white in the wake of reconstruction, when freed slaves and poor whites had the opportunity to join together in class but instead were separated by race
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
07/21/09

@HurtsSoGood: well said

"most qualified" has previously meant "breathing and has a pulse and is white and male"
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allyzay
07/21/09

@momof3wildkids: I imagine most AA proponents, whatever that exactly means, would claim that we should be making efforts in both realms. I'm basing this on the fact that I have never in my entire life, which includes interviewing people abotu AA, heard a single person say we should not be focusing efforts on improving impoverished and inner city schools to help even the playing field to create these qualified candidates.

I am refraining myself from replying to your unimaginably ill-informed and borderline racist comment about how wonderful it'd be to be a Native American woman and all the wonderful perks you'd receive because I don't want to promote the comment, but let me just point out that between that and your "insulting to earn a scholarship..." statement, you're apparently a lucky lady from a lucky background. But I think you should do a little more research into these statistics before you start going off on unqualified scholarship recipients who are just getting a chance over poor little white men because of their skin color.
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