Feel free to watch the whole awful, terrible, no good, VERY bad thing...
...but if you want to limit the damage to your cerebral cortex, may I suggest you start about 3:15 and tiptoe through Patrick J. Buchanan's verbal tulips regarding the utter failure of a human being currently being considered for the Supreme Court:
Pat Buchanan: Summa Cum Laude?!? Everyone graduates Suma Cum Laude from Harvard!
Chris Matthews: But a moment ago, Pat, when I said that her high school scores were through the roof and you said their irrelevant. How can you say something like that?
Pat Buchanan: Nowadays they are! I mean half these kids get straight A's. Its a joke!
Matthews: You've puffed up Sarah Palin for President!
Buchanan: Sarah Palin is accomplished on her own right. No affirmative action there boys.
Oh my. And there's so much more. About the disgrace of using nursery rhymes to improve ones English... about how how being "raised up" means someone else needs to be "cast down" (I assume he never heard about LEGACY STUDENTS who get in on the fact that their parents are alumni and not on their own merits)... about the "militant" Ms. Sotomayor being "rolled into" Princeton.
But I'll leave you with these three thoughts.
First to the people who run MSNBC: When Patrick goes on camera, who holds his purple sheet with the Mystic Insignia Of A Klansman over the right breast? Does he have a hook in the green room and there's like, an intern, whose forced to valet park flaming cross? And how many different forms of sleep aids do you have to take at night in order to justify continually putting this man on the air? Is the justification "balance" or "spark" or simply that you've gotten so jaded that you can't hear what he's saying anymore; or that he really is just filler between the commercials for happy ass cream and penis puffing pills? I mean, even if you pull out the "race" part... if I, say at a party, were to ramble nonsensical shit about "everyone graduating Summa Cum Laude" would you really turn to each other and say, "Hey, let's give THAT guy a lucrative contract and multiple minutes of valuable broadcast air time!"
Second to Pat Himself: Um, I didn't graduate Summa Cum anything for anywhere. My wife didn't graduate Summa Cum. My parents. My siblings. My friends. My work associates. More importantly, YOU, you absolute waste of 206 bones, YOU didn't graduate Summa Cum Laude from Harvard (and BTW its PRINCETON, Patrick). YOU were, apparently, "rolled into" Georgetown (where you did not graduate with honors) and she of the Royal Moose Order of No Affirmative Action There, Boys did not graduate from ANYWHERE in the same IQ bracket as Harvard. Not Hawaii Pacific College. Not North Idaho College. Not University of Idaho in Moscow. I am not making these places up. And, Patrick, unless NOWADAYS is 1976 I think you'd better revise your view of Ms. Sotomayor with "the pants down at the bottom of the ass" and the boom box on her shoulder.
Lastly to Eugene Robinson (who, in the above, acquits himself nicely, mostly by not getting off his stool and using it as a weapon to beat Mr. "She's No Scalia" back into the early 1960's where his thought process of above would be welcome around any white's only lunch counter):
Please, Eugene. Please.
REFUSE TO GO ON TV ANYMORE WITH PAT.
Because we are very close to the point where your choosing to sit next to him on set is not point/counter-point, but tacit admittance that such discourse is "coherant" and "acceptable " and "decent."
****
For those who want to READ the full train wreck...
MATTHEWS: What did the Republicans accomplish? Did they simply remind their voters, who were losing memory about this, what the party believes in? Is that what they‘re pushing?
BUCHANAN: This is about Obama. The objective is to paint her as she really is truthfully. It‘s just what I said, a militant, liberal Latina—
MATTHEWS: Militant?
ROBINSON: Where does militant—
(CROSS TALK)
BUCHANAN: But here‘s someone—OK, New York State has to give the voting rights to convicted inmates in prison because otherwise there‘s a disparate impact, because so many Hispanics and African Americans are in prisons. That is wild stuff, Chris. No Republican, no conservative could have done something on the other side and gotten away with that. They told her, look, whatever you go up there—
MATTHEWS: Aren‘t a lot of states getting rid of that felons can‘t vote?
BUCHANAN: Judges can‘t do that.
ROBINSON: The word militant is a ridiculous word to use for Sonia Sotomayor. There‘s nothing in her life that she‘s ever done that‘s remotely militant. Remember the ‘60s? Militant?
MATTHEWS: You make it seem like she‘s up front with Acorn.
ROBINSON: This is a woman who has operated within the system for her entire life, studying by candle light so she can pass—you know, going to going to Princeton, perfecting her English.
BUCHANAN: Reading "Rumplestiltskin" in college. Come on.
ROBINSON: The most conventional kind of American story you‘ve ever heard.
BUCHANAN: My beef with her is this—one of the beefs I have with her; here is coming out of school. She gets a big scholarship to Princeton. She enrolls in there.
MATTHEWS: What do you mean gets rolled in there? Wait a minute.
Pat, you‘re a very articulate fellow. What does rolled in there mean?
BUCHANAN: She‘s affirmative action. She‘s brought ahead of a lot of kids.
MATTHEWS: Do you know what her grade point average was in high school?
BUCHANAN: I don‘t care what it is.
MATTHEWS: That‘s right, you don‘t care. It‘s a relevant point.
BUCHANAN: She said I‘m an affirmative action baby all the way.
(CROSS TALK)
MATTHEWS: Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We‘re back. You‘re looking at a scene by the Capital building. That was, by the way—it looks it was an incident involving a police chase of a car. It had nothing to do with any public official.
We‘re back with Pat Buchanan and Gene Robinson. This question; what makes you think, Pat, that this person is unqualified? Unqualified to get into Princeton, unqualified serve on the court. You‘re going through the whole situation here.
BUCHANAN: She said herself she was an affirmative action baby her whole life. She didn‘t get the grades—
MATTHEWS: Her words?
BUCHANAN: Her words. And she also said look, in college I had to read classic children‘s books in order to learn English a lit bit better. She‘s been advanced her whole career. She got on the Yale Law Review. Where are her LSAT scores? Where are her SAT scores going into high school or college? Where has she written something in the law review—where is an opinion of hers we‘ve seen that‘s really brilliant? You might disagree with it.
(CROSS TALK)
MATTHEWS: You have talked up Sarah Palin for president.
BUCHANAN: Sarah Palin is accomplished on her own right. No affirmative action there, boy.
(CROSS TALK)
ROBINSON: That is just a total misreading and misunderstanding of what affirmative action is. I realize you use it as a pejorative. I think it‘s a great thing, because it‘s opening the doors to people are qualified.
No, I‘m not Frank Ricci. I‘m Gene Robinson. I‘m an affirmative action, baby. Guess what? Doors were open for me. Now, I had very good SATs. I also took the LSATs and I did very well too.
(CROSS TALK)
MATTHEWS: You said they‘re irrelevant what her high school grades were.
BUCHANAN: Nowadays, they are. Half these kids get straight A‘s all the way through. It‘s a joke.
ROBINSON: All the more reason to open the door to people who are qualified, people who graduate --
BUCHANAN: How do you find out who is qualified other than by tests?
MATTHEWS: Pat, she was a Suma Cum Laude.
BUCHANAN: Suma Cum Laude? Everyone graduates Cum Laude from Harvard now.
(CROSS TALK)
BUCHANAN: That lady up there is a Scalia? Come on.