Humorist Pat Buchanan has been providing laughs by the barrels the past week.
He hasn't always made everyone laugh. Mind you, that's not because some liberals might think he is a racist, anti-Semitic homophobe. No, no, conservatives close to Mr. Buchanan have acknowledged that, as well.
In 1991, the father of modern conservatism William F. Buckley wrote in the National Review that it was "impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination, the military build-up for the Gulf War, amounted to anti-Semitism."
And when Mr. Buchanan ran for president in 1996, the chairman of the Republican National Committee Rich Bond said that Pat Buchanan was "heading toward a low-road message of anger, hate and race-baiting."
Or during his 2000 presidential campaign, conservative writer and Fox TV commentator Charles Krauthammer said of Mr. Buchanan, "There's no doubt he makes subliminal appeals to prejudice."
So, at least we all understand that even important conservatives acknowledge that Pat Buchanan directs race-baiting bigotry and hate towards minorities.
It was therefore notable to see the comedy stylings of Pat Buchanan whining about having been "Blacklisted" when MSNBC fired him.
Who else but a master humorist would go on television to claim that he had been Blacklisted from going on television?!
Of course, the joke is that Pat Buchanan knows he wasn't "Blacklisted," he was fired by his boss. But why let truth get in the way of a fine, white whine?
We'll get to that in a moment. But the topper is that the only thing galling about Pat Buchanan getting fired by MSNBC is that he'd been hired by them in the first place.
To be clear, Pat Buchanan has every right to give his racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic beliefs on television. But going on television as an individual is worlds different from being hired by a network and speaking as a representative employee. So, Pat Buchanan should be awed that MSNBC actually hired him for even one day. Remarkably, he was kept as an employee there for 10 years.
Indeed, Pat Buchanan whining about being "Blacklisted" becomes all the more comical when you realize he has been trying to disenfranchise minorities for decades.
Consider just a handful of the racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic declarations that Mr. Buchanan has offered for years:
"[Former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke is busy stealing from me. I have a mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft."
Adolph Hitler "was also an individual of great courage."
"[Nobel Peace Prize-winner Martin Luther King was] one of the most divisive men in contemporary history."
"[W]omen are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed..."
"America [is] committing suicide... The American majority is not reproducing itself. Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate."
Read those last words again. Only white people are "Americans" to Pat Buchanan. Americans of Asian, African and Latin America heritage are not.
And there's oh-so much more. Pat Buchanan even wrote an entire book arguing against the need to fight Adolf Hitler - Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War.
And somehow, he got hired by MSNBC to represent them. For 10 years.
You'd think it would be hard for Pat Buchanan to go over the racist hate line, since the line was obliterated long ago. But recently he did the near-impossible:
In his new book, Pat Buchanan bemoans the future of White America. Consider just this one paragraph, where Mr. Buchanan fondly recalls a happier past, when dear ol' segregation, bigotry, lynchings, and Jim Crow laws kept so many Black people oppressed -
"Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans."
Good times. It's just that some of us Americans got killed for looking at a white woman.
And for saying all this amid a lifetime of hate, Pat Buchanan was finally fired from his job.
And he quips on television that he was "Blacklisted" from television.
Blacklisted!
"I know these Blacklisters," he wrote in his column. "They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings."
Blacklisted!! Pat Buchanan. The poor thug who has spent a lifetime attacking the weak and needy. Now, he's become the whiney weak one in need. Blacklisted!!!
Except that Pat Buchanan knows what a Blacklist really is. He knows that when we talk about "The Blacklist" - it was an actual list. Called "Red Channels."
People had to testify before Congress under oath about their private beliefs. People were forced to inform on friends. People were put in federal prison for their beliefs. (Those beliefs, by the way, were liberal.)
Suggesting that he's being Blacklisted is a calculated deception of what the Blacklist truly was. It's a fake persecution complex. The Blacklist wasn't "some people don't like me." It was creating an actual list and putting liberal Americans in jail for their views.
Pat Buchanan knows what a Blacklist is. He was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, one of its leading proponents. If Pat Buchanan had worked for Mr. Nixon when his boss was on the House Un-American Activities Committee, he likely would have lead the Blacklist charge.
That's why, more than most anyone, Pat Buchanan knows how a Blacklist works. And the truth is, rather than "operating behind closed doors," his opponents have been wildly vocal. The organization "Color of Change" created a public website to bring Pat Buchanan's own words publicly to light.
Pat Buchanan wasn't "Blacklisted." He isn't blocked from appearing on television. He wrote about it all in his own national column and whined on Fox - who will likely hire him
Pat Buchanan was fired from his job as an analyst for being a very public racist, anti-Semitic homophobe.
Here's the thing:
You don't have a right to be on MSNBC or Fox or any of these places. It's the prerogative of the management. And a group that is offended by your comments has the right to complain about it.
Those aren't my words, by the way. It's from Chris Wallace, of Fox News - who added about Pat Buchanan, "I don't think they Blacklisted him."
Still, for all his whining about being Blacklisted, Pat Buchanan has made progress. At least this is the first time he's ever associated himself with anything black.
Buchanans "amen corner" crack was his best! Made me smile.
A diversity of opinion should be welcome. I am saddened to see him go. Maybe we should have the dour Krauthammer (or Bill Bennett, or Hannity) on, who will always espouse the right wing, neo-con, reactionary point of view?
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The tragedy is one can change the names and say the same things about a lot of other indviduals.
A lot of "Exceptionalism" rhetoric along with a lot of spin hides a lot of plain ignorance.
At least that's what he always said about the unemployed.
just like before the iraq war we are seeing the scare articles about how there be can no life if iran develops nuclear weapons. i think it would be a good thing, because israel would have to become a little less arrogant, and stop this constant push for someone else (u.s.a.) to fight their wars for them.