Pat Buchanan--WTF?

He's nuts. I know. Picking on Uncle Pat for his peculiar version of racism is like a canned hunt, but you have to give Rachael Maddow points for marksmanship just given that many people in the mainstream media have not actually considered him a game animal before. But here, he just looks like what he is--an artifact of a bygone era in American ethnocentricity.

I think the thing I like best is his implausible assertion that not only is Sonia Sotomayor an affirmative action choice for Ivy League studies, which might be plausible given that she entered Princeton with a full scholarship, but that her success, such as graduating from Princeton summa cum laude and winning the Pryne prize, stem from some insane liberalism that must have infected every single professor she had.

Think about that. In Uncle Pat's world--she was reading the equivalent of The Hungry Caterpillar just to be able to keep up with Ivy League college-level work. (As opposed to reading young adult fiction to get a better grasp of idiomatic English usage and style, which is how I understand her story). And aaaalllllll of her professors had to be militant liberals who said, "Ah, well, this is 'C-' work--but it's a Latina 'A+'!" And all the accomplishments she's had since--"affirmative action."

That paragon of "affirmative action", George H.W. Bush, selected her for the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York--and somehow she served for 17 years in that and other capacities with no one noticing she was just not all that competent; in Buchanan's world, that could happen. When she was approved for the 2nd District Court of appeals, once again--affirmative action.

He complains that the field from which Obama chose was narrowed down to four women, from which he chose the Latina. Although diversity is perhaps one aim Obama had (age, undoubtedly, is more important, from the POV of longevity in the court), it rankles Buchanan to suppose that the choice did not include a white male. Because in his eyes--an exemplary education and court experience aside, a white male would be--

Right. If a white male had a distinguished education from an Ivy League University and 17 years on the bench, why, that's the natural order of things, just like the leadership of white guys in founding this country, writing our Constitution, and fighting in so many of our wars. He'd never have disparaged those achievements in a white male. There is no reason to believe that an Hispanic woman isn't just as good. But Buchanan just says--"No she isn't." His reason is no reason at all. If she was out of her depth at Princeton, she'd have sank. If she was unqualified for the bench, she'd have disgraced herself. His argument is stupid and patently bigoted. Even the arguments of minor-league bigots like Jeff Sessions, who want to paint her as racist, pale in comparison to the naked assumption of "unworthiness because of" race and gender, which is where Buchanan is tending. If he wants to point to "what has she written", he's pulling criteria out of his ass. What has any justice written? What creativity does he expect from the bench--indeed, isn't that kind of what conservatives grouse about? Too much diversion from stated case law?

What I think has disturbed the right about Sotomayor is that she actually kind of is proof that affirmative action can work--that it can assist people of intellect and drive to accomplish a great deal and seize upon opportunities that their background would not have afforded them otherwise. But the existence of programs to offer a hand up is no hand out--they represent a stepping stone, not a ladder. Buchanan's view is "dated" in that he can not imagine a woman, let alone a woman of a minority group, standing toe-to-toe in a white male's world without stilts.

And once again I ask--how is it that when race becomes an issue, we hear from Buchanan? Because I never felt he had the "intellectual candlepower" to discuss matters of race.