Buchanan's got his rant down pat

    Hollywood’s prolonged writers' strike had one profoundly positive impact: It changed the TV viewing patterns of many Americans, me among them.
    Rather than wasting my time watching reruns of network sitcoms and dramas, I turned almost exclusively to the cable networks where I witnessed real-life drama and comic situations.
    Day in and day out, I’ve been glued to the tube, watching the political news shows and listening to the talking heads share their opinions. Of late, one of the most notorious talking heads, Pat Buchanan has been in overdrive. He’s been all over MSNBC and on the McLaughlin Group judging why Barack Obama’s brilliant speech on Race and Politics wasn’t good enough. Buchanan (and to a lesser degree, his right-wing sister, Babe Buchanan) has been chastising Obama for having the audacity to sit in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years and listen to the sermons without giving Rev. Jeremiah Wright a tongue-lashing for his “hateful” messages before never setting foot in the church again.
    Well, while we’re in the looking-back-on-20-years mode, let’s take a look at Buchanan. He’s a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He admires the Confederate General Robert E. Lee. And, over the years, he’s said a hateful thing or two about African Americans.
    Although right wing radicals like Buchanan have no use for it, I’m feeling pretty PC on this particular day so I’ll say that Pat is racially insensitive rather than just out and out call him a racist.
    Fortunately, AgentX on the African American Opinion blog said it for me–and said it better than I might have. Here’s how he kicked it off on the blog (For clarity, I'm putting AgentX's words in blue font and Buchanan's in red):
 
Notorious racist ranter Pat Buchanan asks "Where's the Gratitude?" from Blacks.

Get ready to get pissed off. Even if you are not black, this will piss you off.

First, some context. Pat Buchanan is a paleo-conservative former presidential candidate who is now an author and MSNBC political analyst. In the past he has made numerous racist statements, as documented by many sources, including Media Matters. Did you think he would stop since his last shameful incident? I didn't either.

On the 21st, he released this shameful, inaccurate, and downright racist rant (called "A Brief For Whitey") against Obama, Pastor Wright, and the entire Black community, with some splash damage on poor Whites, Native Americans, Asians and especially Latinos.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

    Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

    This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

 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?

    Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.

    Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.

    Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

    Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

    As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

    Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

    We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

    Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

I don't have all night to debunk this entire sack of crap, so I'm gonna touch up on a few issues.

    Click here to see how AgentX touched on the issues.
    And, in the meantime, as you watch Buchanan pretending to speak for the angry white man, remember he’s actually speaking to him. He’s giving him talking points to perpetuate the politics of old. Buchanan's script is not written for us.