I refuse to watch MSNBC until they fire Pat Buchanan

in Politics by griffn — September 7, 2009 at 2:21 pm | 1 comment

And I don’t mean let him go quietly. I mean, fire him in the most public and humiliating way possible.

I’ve felt this way ever since last year when then-candidate Barack Obama– responding to the Reverend Wright controversy– gave his speech on race in Philadelphia, where he recounted America’s long, complex history on race.

Some people liked it, some people didn’t, but Buchanan’s response stood out among all others. In an article titled “A Brief For Whitey,” Buchanan argued that black people should be thankful for slavery and that every social program the government has ever instituted– from welfare to student loans to Medicaid– has been nothing more than a handout for blacks. Observe:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Never mind the fact that just a cursory glance at statistics would tell you that whites are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of most of those programs, including affirmative action, which rightfully put more white women into the workplace than any other group. Worse than that, Buchanan believes that black people should be thankful for the 400-year transatlantic slave trade that killed as many as 10 million Africans, because if it wasn’t for slavery, they wouldn’t be living in our modern-day “black utopian” America.

This is the equivalent of saying that Jews should be thankful for the Holocaust. But ironically, I don’t even need to make that stretch because Buchanan just happens to be a card carrying Hitler-apologist as well.

Last Thursday, on the 70th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland, Buchanan celebrated by writing an article titled “Did Hitler Want War?” in which he argued that historians have misunderstood Hitler’s peaceful intentions, that Hitler was not bent on conquering the world, and that he actually wanted to end the war in 1940, “almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.” Buchanan’s argument– which he has made before in the past– is that World War II wasn’t worth it and that the Holocaust was Britain and Poland’s fault, not Hitler’s.

Which brings us to MSNBC, where Buchanan is given a nationally televised platform and has collected a steady paycheck for years as a political contributor. Last week, Buchanan’s Hitler article was being promoted on MSNBC’s website. They took it down once the criticism and complaints began coming in:

David A. Harris, President of the National Jewish Democratic Council, condemned MSNBC’s promotion of the “deplorable” column and urged that it be removed from MSNBC.com. Well, now the network has pulled it. (Indeed, the old link is dead).

Harris, in second statement, said that “MSNBC took the responsible action and removed Pat Buchanan’s column,” while adding that “no worthy news organization should employ and promote a commentator who engages in such vile fiction.”

An MSNBC spokesperson issued a statement to POLITICO: “An editorial decision was made to remove the column from msnbc.com. Pat is a contributor to MSNBC, his syndicated column does not speak for the network or represent the views of MSNBC”

But here’s the thing. MSNBC can play the old “the views expressed by so-and-so do not necessarily represent” card all day. But when you are paying someone to express those views, promoting those views on your website, giving those views a steady national platform on cable news, then those views do represent the views of MSNBC. If they truly don’t, then prove it; stop paying the guy and find another commentator.

It’s not as if Buchanan’s views on blacks and Jews (and women and gays and immigrants and every other segment of the population that isn’t white males) are a secret. Fair.org put together a comprehensive list of Buchanan’s own words on these subjects and it reads as if he has learned absolutely nothing from any progress made in America since about 1850. Keep in mind that this list (click the link above just to see how long it is) was put together in 1996 and doesn’t even include all the things he’s said in the last decade. Here’s just a sample of Buchanan’s quotes:

▪ White House adviser Buchanan urged President Nixon in an April 1969 memo not to visit “the Widow King” on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, warning that a visit would “outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse…. Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.” (New York Daily News, 10/1/90)

▪ In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was “an individual of great courage…. Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.” (Guardian, 1/14/92)

▪ Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.” (syndicated column, 2/7/90) He referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?” (syndicated column, 9/17/89)

▪ “Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.” (syndicated column, 11/22/83)

So why does MSNBC continue to employ someone who believes, in his own words, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was “divisive” and Hitler was a “genius,” that women aren’t “endowed by nature” with the brainpower to succeed in our society? If the guy in working in MSNBC’s accounting department came into work expressing these views to coworkers, he’d be fired on the spot. If an MSNBC job applicant had these views on their Facebook page, they wouldn’t pass the first background check. So why does Pat Buchanan get a pass?

The truth is that MSNBC believes that Buchanan’s views are worthwhile– worth airing and worth discussing. They believe he represents a segment of angry, aggrieved, conservative white males in America, who happen to be racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, jingoistic, and completely unapologetic about all of it. MSNBC believes that this buffoonish caricature of conservatism is one worth giving a platform to.

Well, here’s what I believe. I believe that people like Pat Buchanan should be isolated and marginalized as much as possible. I believe that if you want to hear what someone like Buchanan has to say, it should not be as easy as turning on your television or pulling up the website of a major news organization; it should take a Google search and a lot of scrolling. I believe that when someone walks in the door arguing that women are naturally inferior and white rule over blacks is not inherently wrong, that we shouldn’t sit around and hear this person out, we shouldn’t give them a national platform to debate their views, we should escort them back out the door as quickly and as loudly as we possibly can.

And I refuse to watch MSNBC until they do just that.

Specifically, until this man does just that: Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC: phil.griffin@nbcuni.com.

Tags: affirmative action anti-Semitism Barack Obama Facebook Google Hitler Holocaust Jeremiah Wright MSNBC Pat Buchanan Politics racism sexism slavery World War II