Friday, May 14, 2010

Pat Buchanan, translated from the German once again

Molly Ivins' famous quip about Pat Buchanan proves to be true again: it sounded better in the original German.

While Diane Butler Bass writes a sad, elegaic, pseudo-liberal lament for upcoming lack of Protestants on the Supreme Court, Pat Buchanan comes right out with an antisemitic screed Are liberals anti-WASP?:
Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats....
If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.
If Kagan is confirmed, three of the four justices nominated by Democratic presidents will be from New York City: Kagan from the Upper West Side, Sotomayor from the Bronx, Ruth Bader Ginsburg from Brooklyn. Breyer is from San Francisco.
Is there a reason that this aging America Firster is still considered a credible source of opinions by MSNBC, the supposed liberal cable network? (This column was published on World Net Daily, Human Events, Townhall.com).

Update: Continuing on this bigoted theme, see Bishop Harry Jackson, who is an African American pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, DC, and has appeared on many right-wing talk shows, writes on Townhall.com:
"The nomination of Elena Kagan for Supreme Court should outrage evangelical Protestants." He's really angry about anti-religious movies and books (by people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins). "Against the backdrop of the religious mis-education of the nation, evangelical Christians must embrace (once and for all) that they must let their voices be heard in politics, the arts, and every arena of our culture. Although Catholics are well represented on the Supreme Court, there will likely be important cases that will need the insight of unbiased evangelicals to create an atmosphere for true justice." 
"Unbiased evangelicals"? Better - "bigoted evangelicals," like himself.

Some other notices of Buchanan's antisemitism:

Charles Johnson (of LGF) on True/Slant
Rick Ungar on True/Slant
Jason Linkins of Huffington Post
Rachel Slajda of Talking Points Memo
Maureen O'Connor of Gawker
David Weigel at the Washington Post writes:
Let's put this in context.
Buchanan has been clamoring for more whites to get Supreme Court seats for four decades, and in 1971 he wrote this in a memo to President Richard Nixon.
Italian Americans, unlike blacks, have never had a Supreme Court member — they are deeply concerned with their “criminal” image; they do not dislike the President. Give those fellows the “Jewish seat” or the “black seat” on the Court when it becomes available.
The court now has two Italian American members, so Buchanan revisits his obsession to make a tiresome argument -- that Obama is passing over theoretically qualified white candidates and that, hint hint, this provides an opening for conservatives.
"Neither Obama nominee is academically distinguished," writes Buchanan of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both of whom graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University.
Really, it's such a thin and weakly argued column, coming from such a place of bias, that I don't forsee many smart conservatives looking to it for advice on how to oppose Kagan.

4 comments:

  1. Hmmm... it all sounds vaguely like a variant on (gasp) Affirmative Action - aren't these types adamantly anti-quota 'may the best man win' types? Suddenly the Supreme Court should reflect society at large? When it was twelve white protestant men, were they singing this tune?

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  2. Nope, when it was 12 white Protestant men, that was just fine.

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  3. I didn't think there were any smart conservatives.

    http://nuancepolitics.blogspot.com/

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  4. 12? How did I let that error slip through? There are nine justices on the Supreme Court, not 12!

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