I wish we had some non-racist commentators on the teevee who would frequently and forcefully point out that working-class Americans, period, can't catch a break. Of course, the very last thing the corporate owners of the teevee want is to help ALL working-class Americans come together to demand policies that are in their common interest regardless of race or gender. Dividing them is good for the interests of the ownership class, uniting them quite the contrary. And so, we get Volksgenosse Pat.

Buchanan lost it years ago. Remember his 'culture war' speech @ the 1992 RNC?

-Z

Heck, black Americans have shed blood in every war since before the Revolution. Trying to argue that people whose ancestors came here long before Buchanan's are somehow "less American" than he is is truly bizarre.

Before we were people in the eyes of the law...

Yeah, that's exactly the time Buchanan et al. are nostalgic about.

Giving the devil his due (heh) I can give Buchanan credit for at least one bit of kinda-sorta truth. Because whenever I see "Christianity" depicted in media, it's usually to be ridiculed. But that version of Christianity - perhaps what pat feels is HIS version of Christianity - is usually portrayed as either a bully trying to shove his morality down others' throats, or a pious goody-two-shoes whose head is not in reality. In other words, characters who are practically asking to be mocked

HOWEVER, I see plenty of characters employing what I would consider to be Christian virtues - like honesty, compassion, sympathy, benevolence, charity, mercy. It's just that the characters displaying those qualities are rarely wearing their religion - whatever it is - on their sleeve.

I think what Pat wants is people who are OBVIOUSLY Christian OBVIOUSLY being heroes and making nothing but the right choices for all the world to see and to admire with no criticism, either of their actions, or the quality of the entertainment AS entertainment.

In other words, he's imposing his morality on others, which s SO not a Christian thing to do.

That poor man can best be described as a serial racist.

MSNBC should drop Buchanan, or at least explain why they keep giving him a platform. And if Olbermann has the guts, he'll put "Uncle Pat" on his Worst Persons list tonight.

You look up the phrase 'dumb blonde' in Wikpedia and you'll see Mika's picture. Last year almost to the day she defended Sarah Palin spending $50k on clothes. The other day she defended Fox News against the unwarranted attacks by the Obama White House.
Please, can we get her and Joe over to Pravda (er I mean Fox) ASAP.

Could someone please tell Mr. Buchanan that black folks lived in this country prior to 1963? He seems to believe that only white people were Americans before that.

What are these generous gov't programs that are open to illegal aliens, but not U.S. citizens?

He's actually echoing Bill Donohue's idiotic rant which can be seen in today's WaPo.

When these people toss these grenades, I think the question is not: "Is he crazy?" but "Why is Mr. Crazypants saying this, now?"
In Billdo's case, it seems to be a case of "I've Been Off The Radar Too Long, Time To Get Some Cheap Attention."
In Buchanan's case, it seems more like "Hey, Look, Billdo Wrote My Column For Me! I Can Take The Afternoon Off!"

It's a shame that Pat Buchanan has suddenly started espousing these unfortunate views. He was always so level-headed and fair. Salty, yes, but not what you'd call a bigot.

Buchanan lost it years ago...
.
Which, of course explains why he is on TeeVee on a daily basis.......

>"I wish we had some non-racist commentators on the teevee who would frequently and forcefully point out that working-class Americans, period, can't catch a break. "

Steve gets it. The working people get screwed every time.

Buchanon's America is that halcyon time long past when a woman's place was in the home, the heathen Chinese was peculiar and a negro strove to be a credit to his race.

Oh, and let's not forget -- a time when it wasn't illegal if a (Republican) president did it.

Didn't we hear this all through the election season last year? Obama's "white problem," "real Americans."

Bitter older whites are the staple audience for these cable news shows. The programing is tailored to them. I just think its a crime that it bleeds out and contaminates the national discussion.

These are the people who have been bitter and resentful about everything: people who are better educated, their bosses, minorities, non-christians, gays...I grew up on the southwest side of chicago, so I'm very familiar with it. It was sophocating.

Buchanan really butchered the delivery. It sounded so much better in the original German.

I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago too, and Saint Zak hits it on the head.

Wait 'til the Christian Right gets a gander at Dan Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol. Won't that be fun. Anyone see the Dateline show last week with Dan Brown and Matt Lauer? Free Mason's designed this country's constitutional system...and they are not Christians! I am really looking forward to the reaction to this book, because it takes place in Washington, D.C.

What Fun!

I would really like to know what Mika's father thinks of his idiot daughter.

He sure can't be very proud.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

Yep. It's getting so that you can't even keep slaves anymore.

Pat and his ilk should just move to the moon. We promise to leave them alone.

Maybe it's something lost in translation, but I find Pat's speaches far more edifying in their original German.

I was going to say...she must be adopted. There's no way a man that brilliant could have a biological daughter who is so incomprehensibly daft.

just a quick edit...."white working-class REPUBLICAN voters no longer recognize the country around them. America was once their country, DURING THE GLORIOUS REIGN OF ST RONNIE. They sense they are losing it. And they are right."

[nevermind that it was gop policies that flatlined working class wages]

look at how corporate america kicked the champion of white values/victimhood, rush, to the curb the other day. that's gotta smart. times change...

i just hope the last gasp of the dying breed isn't augmented with hails of gunfire...

Pat is, of course, right again. Does anyone seriously question that the America that he pines for was a better, safer, more prosperous one?

Pat Buchanan at his most curmudgeonly often reminds me of the not-so-colorful character of local Fire Chief Willie Conklin in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, a crude and cruel clown who thought race-baiting was good, old-fashioned fun - until one of his stunts set in motion a tragic chain of events that eventually ran him afoul of New York Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo.

fred t: "Pat is, of course, right again. Does anyone seriously question that the America that he pines for was a better, safer, more prosperous one?"

Tell that to the people in these photos.

I get it that Buchanan conflates white people w/ "traditional" Americans, but is it really true that complaints about the "purge" of Christianity from public schools are a white racial grievance?

He's useful to those of us who think that white racial anxiety lies behind ostensibly nonracial complaints of the populist right, because he sees race behind everything.

Buchanan suggests white working-class voters no longer recognize the country around them.

Billy Joel said it better in "Allentown".

given his background as a washington insider for the last four decades, what the hell does pat buchanan know about 'white working-class america?'

oh and fred t, the answer is no.

fred t. that was supposed to be only in your dreams ... sigh ... reading comprehension level down this afternoon

I happen to like Pat. He is the best commentator on the air if you want an honest republican opinion. He doesn't wrap his views in a bunch of non-sense like most republicans.

That being said, he is an outdated jackass who's views are exactly why the republican party is failing.

Pat is, of course, right again. Does anyone seriously question that the America that he pines for was a better, safer, more prosperous one?

For whom?

women?
blacks?
gays and lesbians?
immigrants?
muslims?
the poor?

Folks like Pat glorify the 50s because they were pre-civil war, pre-feminism, pre-everything we define as modern America. You know, back when men were men and women were their servants, blacks knew their place and gays were in the closet.

Such peaceful, prosperious times they were if you were a middle class white man.

Could someone please tell Mr. Buchanan that black folks lived in this country prior to 1963? He seems to believe that only white people were Americans before that.

A little earlier than '63, according to one of Buchanan's racist contemporaries:

"Let me tell you something about Richard E. Nixon. He keeps Pat home. Which was where Roosevelt should have kept Eleanor. Instead he let her run around loose, rousing up the coloreds, tellin' them they were gettin' the short end of the stick and we been having trouble ever since. Eleanor Roosevelt discovered the coloreds in this country. We never knew dey was dere!"
--Archie Bunker

Poor, poor Pat. (and Fred T. apparently). Time is not on their side. The old, crusty, white dinosaurs lumber around, madly lashing out with their tiny Trex arms at a world that has past them by. The pitiful death throes are not pretty. Good riddance indeed.

Whenever I hear the bit about losing our country from whomever, the teabaggers, Buchanan, other extremists, I always wonder what America they think they've lost. My conclusion is that they actually lost their America on the day that Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was decided. From that day on their America has been going down in flames. And rightly so. That America is nothing like the values that our fundamental values portray.

fred t: "Pat is, of course, right again. Does anyone seriously question that the America that he pines for was a better, safer, more prosperous one?"

For white people, sure.

MSNBC should drop Buchanan, or at least explain why they keep giving him a platform. And if Olbermann has the guts, he'll put "Uncle Pat" on his Worst Persons list tonight.

They give him a platform because he makes all Republicans and conservatives look like idiots.

Ditto for the networks who continue to book McCain. What better way to portray the Republicans than trot out their failed Presidential candidate.

"Pat is, of course, right again. Does anyone seriously question that the America that he pines for was a better, safer, more prosperous one?"

Ahhh, poor Fred shits his pants every time he sees a black guy. Just cut out the extra washing and switch to the Depends, it'll save some time.

And Pat ? If Republicans had any brains at all they would embrace the African-American community as part of the true American heritage. Apart from recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, most African-Americans are probably direct descendants from those that lived in this country long before any of our "white" ancestors. Hell, they're all more American than all but a handful of white people.

fred t:

I'm old enough to remember when a WHITE man, not wealthy or anything, just middle class or even "working" class, could bring home enough to support a family. This has not been the case for many years, since the 70s really, and it was never the case for men of color. And who is responsible for the fact that white men can no longer support their families on their salaries unless they're pretty much upper bracket?

Democrats colluded in this too, but unions were broken, and good-paying jobs shipped overseas. Most big business owners are Republicans. I hope you realize this.

I'm also old enough to remember that the U.S. lived in a bubble, a dreamworld, post-WWII. We had no serious competition. Europe and Japan were rototilled by the war. Once they had a chance to rebuild their manufacturing base, they started to overtake us, and since a lot of our factory equipment was old-fashioned compared to what the Europeans and the Japanese could install, we began to lose ground for that reason as well.

And even WHITE folks, leading the Ozzie and Harriet life, sort of anyway, were not happy. The 50s were a time of great conservatism and stultification. Women were bored staying home with no adult companionship. Men had to sacrifice a great deal of themselves to stay in their jobs.

Things are far from great these days, but the "good old days" never were. Every time period has its own problems. And as a woman, I DO have more freedom to pursue my life as I would like to have it, than back in the 50s or 60s. Besides, I LOVE computers and the Internet, while recognizing that they have problems as well. I have no desire to return to a pre-Internet era.

Gee, if only Pat hadn't worked as an enabler for all those white upper class Republicans who spent every year since the 60s working to undermine the standard of living for those working-class voters. I'm pretty sure a lot of those white working-class folks wouldn't feel so threatened by people of other races if they didn't feel like the economic pie was getting smaller, which it has been for everyone but the wealthy, now the super-wealthy.

It's not the liberals fault, Pat. It's yours. Yours and your Republican friends, who've only ever cared about white working-class voters as a tool for exploitation.

If people like Buchanan could mean, "working class" per se instead of reffing to whites, his lament about losing "their country" would be correct. Too bad the valid populism is distorted by the ethnic angle.

issues?

buchanan's got subscriptions!

Did you realize that white working-class voters' Christian faith is 'mocked in movies and on TV'?

I know I'm just a simple layman, but I have never found anything in Buchanan's behavior or speech that really says "Christian". At least the Christianity that I was taught.

I seriously believe that if Jesus were here today, Pat would call him a "peace-sign wearing, free-loving, hook-nosed raghead hippy trying to destroy the American way of life".

Shoter Pat Buchanan: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Eine Vereinigten Staaten.

Unfortunately Mika B prostitutes herself for J. Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. She does it willingly for big $$$$. She lost a great opportunity for greatness when she agreed to prostitute for MSNBC's big bucks!She is also stunningly shallow just like her Daddy remarked of J. Scarborough.