Pat Buchanan on Washington Journal continues his trashing of Sonia Sotomayor as an affirmative action, lightweight, anti-white judge. He repeats the better portion of his May 29th op-ed Obama's Idea of Justice with a few additional insults thrown in for good measure.
Media Matters has an article with his op-ed posted and links to some of his talking points that they've already debunked.
During this interview Buchanan went even further than the op-ed and said this when asked about calling her a "lightweight":
Buchanan: Well I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children's books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you're, frankly if you're in college and you're working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don't think that's college work.
Here's the portion of the New York Times article Buchanan was referencing.
Judge Sotomayor is not known to have identified herself as a beneficiary of affirmative action, but she has described her academic struggles as a new student at Princeton from a Roman Catholic school in the Bronx — one of about 20 Hispanics on a campus with more than 2,000 students.
She spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and “re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books. Only with the outside help of a professor who served as her mentor did she catch up academically, ultimately graduating at the top of her class.
I've heard a lot of ignorant B.S. from Buchanan over the last week or so, but this one takes the cake. He questions whether she actually even graduated at the top of her class or at best deserved to when you see him qualifying the reporting on her class rank with "it said". Then he tries to equate someone doing what they needed to in order to make up for a less than stellar education growing up and equates that with her "college work". Never mind "it said" that she did eventually make her way to the head of the class and overcome that hurdle.
You're a real piece of work Buchanan. I expect we'll be treated to more of this on Morning Joe or one of Pat's other countless appearances on MSNBC for the week.
Buchanan goes on to compare Sotomayor's intellectual rigor to that of, among others, .... Clarence Thomas.
Buchanan: But I will say this. She's going to have an opportunity up before that hearing to demonstrate she's a Scalia, or an Alito, or a John Roberts, or a Clarence Thomas in terms of understanding the law.
Yeah, Clarance Thomas. The guy who doesn't even want to stay awake during court. He then says that her "whole career is about affirmative action". Where the hell is Lawrence O'Donnell when you need him? C-SPAN treated everyone to an hour of this garbage this morning.
Think Progress and their wonderful think tank over there took Buchanan to task for me as well. Thank you Amanda for and the rest of the crew there for the great work you're doing and for some additional analysis on Buchanan's remarks.
