She could have just used Buchanan's speeches.

And the other languages Buchanan himself speaks are? Besides English and Stoopid?

Is Ol' Pat the last of Nixon's minions still polluting the political waters? I guess it's a good thing to keep a reminder around that 'dirty tricks' weren't invented by Karl Rove.

More proof that no matter how well Buchanan plays his stodgy, principled, old-school Republican on MSNBC, he's a xenophobe at best and a racist at worst.

And, MSNBC? You think it might just be time to cut ties with this asshole?

ESOL

or

ASOL (as in always so only lame)

Was she reading "My Pet Goat" during a court case? How any concservative can possibly have the balls to mock someone for stupidity is beyond me. Stupidity is their highest virtue.

He's just being himself, and he's a bigot.

Pat Buchanon is a toxin in our current politcal discourse.

Jason Linkins responded that Buchanan "is just knowingly being a jackass."

More specifically, Buchanan is knowingly being the posterior excretory orifice of a jackass's digestive anatomy.

Not to move him to the front of the body, but what a dick.

So the fact that Judge Sotomayor made a concerted effort to make sure she was familiar with the same cultural references as her Princeton classmates just proves that she can't read above a third-grade level? Huh?

Really! The amount of time that MSNBC gives that old C**ksucker, he must have naked pictures of Joe Scarborough (EEWWWW) Seriously, it is the game they play on TEEVEE . Insert one outrageous racist old codger, One opinionated Uber liberal (hello Joan Walsh ) Mix . Yelling ensues . = Good TEEVEE. Most of the time they can't even do it with a straight face , we are all being played for suckers.

SecularAnimist, please don't insult the posterior excretory orifices of a jackass's digestive anatomy. They are just doing a necessary job to keep the animal healthy.

Buchannon, on the other hand, is an evil, small, cancerous spot on the body politic. He does nothing good for the national politics.

Not to mention that the article says she was reading elementary grammar books, not children's fiction. You know, the same kind of elementary grammar that anyone who learns a second language has to be careful about, if they want to avoid sounding like a foreigner?

Racist jackass, through and through.

"And, MSNBC? You think it might just be time to cut ties with this asshole?"

No, no, no, because MSNBC has to have Pat to balance the overwhelmingly liberal bias of broadcast journalism.

MSM, bought and paid for by the Rethugs. Do not attempt to look for the truth in places that it does not exist. They lie and the MSM repeats it and makes it the truth for the ignorant.

To abuse an old joke:

Why does the brain of Manuel Miranda have 32 parts more than that of normal humans?

Answer: Because it operates mechanically.

(Sigh... of course, it does also mention "children's classics." Which doesn't alter the basic point, but does make me annoyed that I missed it.)

My brother is a professor at a major midwestern state university, and the vast majority of his undergrad students are from white, upper-middle-class-and-above families. He'll confirm that a large percentage of these kids would benefit tremendously from reviewing elementary grammar books, since most of them wouldn't know "proper English" if it bit them on their beer-enlarged asses.

The only reason - The Only Reason - we're hearing all this bullshit is because they lost the election. Full Stop.

Pat "electrified-fence-shoot-to-kill-on-the-Mexican border, US shoulda stayed out of WWII" Buchanan is famous for that kinda demagoguery. It's how he butters his bread. He's not an idiot, he just sells to idiots.

But seriously, I can see how a person might sincerely (as opposed to Buchanan's insincerity) wonder how someone who needs remediation on basic grammar (“re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books) could even gain entrance to Princeton. Many people with nearly perfect SAT scores were turned down by much less prestigious schools - I know some personally.

But at the same time, I've also seen immigrants from China or Latin America, who do not speak perfect English and yet are smart as hell, and can break the curve at Harvard and MIT. So you don't need to have perfect grammar to excel, nor get in apparently.

Pat Buchanan is a dick.

I have to laugh at Pat's denigration of the Princeton experience. According to him, the best of them are ignorant and stupid. And Princeton gives away academic honors. Doesn't say much for people like Michael Goldfarb who graduated from Princeton with nothing in the way of honors.

Where did Buchanan go to college? Did he go to college?

He was also typically disparaging of her smarts today on Chris Matthews. I really hate Republicans.

[...]I can see how a person might sincerely (as opposed to Buchanan's insincerity) wonder how someone who needs remediation on basic grammar (“re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books) could even gain entrance to Princeton. -- flubber, @16:57

*My* first thought wasn't "how did she get to Princeton?". My first thought was "that much for parochial school education..." She graduated top of her class and needed to beef up her English? What about the kids who graduated bottom of the class? What kind of remedial work did *they* need? And did they ever get it?

Children's *fiction* is a different matter altogether; I don't expect she had all that many "frills" growing up, given that her mother was a sole provider for a family of three. Not to mention that her mother herself wasn't, probably, clued in on Anglo children's lit. I didn't read Mother Goose and things like Harold and the Purple Crayon until after my son was born (though Dr Doolittle and Winnie the Pooh were my friends from the time I was 5); not every children's book had been translated into Polish :) My son was lucky, in that he had an American father and me for sources; I dragged a suitcase full of kids books back here every time I went to visit my parents in Warsaw.

Buchanan screams seven octaves higher, like a girly-man, when he gets all excited about politics, (maybe at other times, too, but I wouldn't know that). He reminds me of that girly-man Tucker with the bowtie, that also screamed seven octaves higher. Hopefully he will go the way of Tucker, to Fox news where he belongs, and the two of them can go screaming together, like girly-men, into the sunset.

I'm sorry, but the headline on this post -- "Cheap, Even for Pat Buchanan" is a filthy lie.

It's not cheap for him at all. It's just about par for the course.

Pat Buchanan was handed his hat by Lawrence O'Donnell on the Chris Matthews show, as he critiqued Sotomoyer and affirmative action.

He was totally slammed on CSPAN this weekend by a caller, who questioned why his racist remarks are spouted unchecked.

Yeah--MSNBC has to stop acting like Buchanan has credibility. He does not.

Come on, now. You know that if it was a conservative Republican judge who had to "beef up" on his English reading at Princeton, you would be all over this.

Hardcore liberals and hardcore neoconservatives might believe in different things, but their personalities are the same: they feel emotional about something (usually having power) and then come up with all sorts of little explanations for their positions later on.

It's just like the George Tiller tragedy and the Arkansas shooting tragedy. I've seen about fifty posts glorifying George Tiller. And I have seen no comparable support for the soldier murdered in the shooting by an Islamic terrorist.

Politics is pretty much just like any other sport. You all are on the "liberal" team. So, you make up your mind ahead of time before looking for any facts. Just like the neocons do. And then you cherry-pick data later on to rationalize your position and make yourself reasonable.

Well, I grew up in an immigrant home and I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. I eventually learned English, overcame my accent, became a voracious reader, and now have spent the better part of 40 years as a writer and editor. A highly motivated immigrant or child of an immigrant is very likely to work hard at polishing his or her English language skills to be competitive in school and employment. Lots of native-born English speakers, however, don't feel the need to practice those skills. At best, they limit their opportunities for success. Worse, they may end up posting on blogs, calling other people morans and hypocrates. At worst, they turn into Sarah Palin.

I've seen about fifty posts glorifying George Tiller. And I have seen no comparable support for the soldier murdered in the shooting by an Islamic terrorist.

Silly me -- I didn't realize that the soldier who was murdered in Arkansas had been receiving personal death threats from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, had been previously wounded by Islamic terrorists and yet continued the work for which he was threatened, and was ultimately gunned down inside his church while attending Sunday services.

That certainly puts a new complexion on things. Here I thought the soldier in Arkansas was the unfortunate random victim of a fanatic with a gun and had barely even gotten out of basic training. Thanks for letting me know that the soldier in Arkansas instead had a long, personal history with terrorists and had been personally attacked by terrorists multiple times before.

"Children's classics" by the likes of Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and Daniel Defoe are for all ages, and are taught in universities, including Princeton.

the a-hole buchanan, don'tcha know, comes to the world of cable from the wonderfulness of pbs (even it it IS the mclaughlin group - gad!), so he HAS to be a serious commentator.

right?

Maybe I'm stupid, but as a lifetime foreign language learner, children's classics are one of my favorite tools. Read Harry Potter (okay, not quite classic, but still fun) in your target language, listen to it again on CD. Instant comprehension improvement. Eventually, you can wade through grown-up literature, too. Walk before you run and all that.

Come on, now. You know that if it was a conservative Republican judge who had to "beef up" on his English reading at Princeton, you would be all over this.

Wow, that's impressive.

Can you tell what I'm thinking about you right now?

And talk about no support for the soldier who was killed--you can't even be bothered to use his name.

It's William Long.

It doesn't say that anyone else thought she needed to improve her grammar -- but that she thought she did. My guess is, her grammar was fine -- it was the realization that, OMG, I'm going to Princeton, that caused her to go back to the basics to make sure she not only knew HOW to speak English, but that she knew all those grammatical principles that most of us knew once upon a time but don't exactly think a whole lot about now.

And as for children's books -- geez, after graduating first in your class from high school, that sounds like a really wonderful way to spend a summer.

And I disagree, if a white person had done this, we would consider them diligent and nerdy, in a good way.

So now we have the new operating Republican principle for dark skinned people: Never give them the benefit of the doubt on anything having to do with intelligence.

.........that's why I luvs me some Lawrence O'Donnell.....he handed Pat his wrinkled old arse on one of the cable channels today in his usual curt, succinct, manner

Alot of bonding among freshmen anywhere will involve shared experiences. Now I wasn't a Latina gal Princeton '76, but I was a white small-town, public-school guy a few years later at another Ivy League. I well understand the need to assimilate. While I needed to bone up on some things after that first year, I was well-versed in middle-class cultural references. If, on the other hand, during freshman year I was scratching my head at references to Gilligan and Mary Ann, I would have made sure I was watching plenty of reruns that summer.

I was going to write that Buchanan's Irish grandpa should rise from the grave and give him a swift kick as it wasn't too long ago people looked at the Irish like they do today with the Hispanics. I see, however, on the internet, he's not quite from the late 19th century Irish stock--more of a Southern ancestry, with some New England forebears (yikes! including some common ancestors with me).

So Buchanan, who is fluent in one language, mocks the language skills of Sotomayor, who is fluent in two.

The Party of Stupid gets it's nickname the old fashioned way. They Earn it.

Amanda Terkel drives the point home nicely: "Buchanan has long claimed that Hispanic immigrants are resistant to learning English ...
How is Sonia an immigrant? Isn't Puerto Rico part of the United States?

Maybe she's just dumb. Buchanan is about the most astute analyst going.

The real hypocrisy here is that Buchanans forebears came here AFTER the Brits beat the Gaelic right out of them. How proud should Pat be that his people already spoke their conqueror's language?