Pat Buchanan Criticizes Sotomayor For Learning English (VIDEO)
Via Crooks and Liars comes this video of Pat Buchanan basically demonstrating why everything he says on teevee about politics should be dubbed out in favor of clown horns and slide whistles and the sounds of old-timey jalopies crashing into each other, because at least those noises wouldn't be as resplendent with intellectual dishonesty as the ones that bleated from his wordhole as he discussed Sonia Sotomayor on Washington Journal.
BUCHANAN: Well I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children's books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you're, frankly if you're in college and you're working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don't think that's college work.
Of course, Buchanan is just knowingly being a jackass, here, as he knows full well that the source he is referring to is an article in the New York Times that noted that the Supreme Court nominee "spent summers reading children's classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and 're-teaching' herself to write 'proper English' by reading elementary grammar books" -- thus describing the extra-curricular labors that a driven-to-succeed Sotomayor set herself to, and not, as Buchanan construes, her "college work."
What's more, as the video shows, Buchanan goes on at length, echoing a substantive point by Jonathan Turley about the lack of "depth" in Sotomayor's legal writing. Buchanan's ridiculous statement about Sotomayor's time at Princeton and how she worked to master the English language is a superfluous bit of commentary that he does not even need to make his point. It's just tossed in there, as some sort of race-baiting value-add!
Writers are often advised to "murder their darlings," or at least imprison your darlings without trial at Writer Gitmo, like they were rhetorical Uighurs, or something. This entire paragraph is an example of a darling that should have been murdered. But it just goes to show that when it comes to murdering your darlings, maybe it's best to start with the stupid, racist ones!
To get back on point, here's Amanda Terkel:
Buchanan has long claimed that Hispanic immigrants are resistant to learning English and has said that it would be easier for them to "assimilate" if they did so. When writing about Mexican immigrants in 2006, Buchanan said that in contrast to Italian immigrants, "millions of Mexicans are determined to retain their language and loyalty to Mexico." Similarly, he has also said that "the road to culture is language" and "they want to keep their Spanish language."
So basically, Buchanan yells when Hispanics are allegedly unwilling to learn English. However, when they make an attempt to do so, he mocks them as being dumb.
Yeah, basically! To Buchanan, a Hispanic is damned if they do or do not speak English, and should be derided in either circumstance. And yet people keep allowing this man to come on their teevee programs to discuss all the terrible things she will do to white people, in Spanish, if she's allowed to sit on the Supreme Court. Isn't that just darling?
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First Posted: 06- 2-09 12:35 PM | Updated: 07- 3-09 05:12 AM