That great defender of downtrodden white men, Pat Buchanan, was at it again with his "affirmative action" rhetoric on Sonia Sotomayor, but this time he gets tag-teamed by Norah and Lawrence O'Donnell for his idiocracy. Pat just can't believe that President Obama's final four choices for the court were....gasp...all women. The horror!
Buchanan: Look, are you going to let me talk, Lawrence? You got down to four women, not a single white male...all women, and then we're going to pick a Hispanic....
Norah O'Donnell: Did it ever occur to you Pat, that maybe there weren’t any white men who were qualified?
Buchanan: Yes.... No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That is an, that would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that.....
Norah O'Donnell: In the past there have been no women who were qualified.
Buchanan: There certainly have been qualified in the past. I don't doubt there are but probably half of the great lawyers and judges are white males in this country and to rule them all out...why? Because of their sex and because of their race is wrong! I think at least it's affirmative action.
Norah O'Donnell: Pat I don't think you have any proof of that they did that. The President was reportedly...
Buchanan: How did he come down to four women?
Nora O'Donnell: He said that they were the best and that's the views that he had, the particular criteria that he had.
Buchanan: What were the criteria? One of them was it had to be a woman and the other it got down to being, hey it's a Hispanic. That's affirmative action!
Norah O'Donnell: Lawrence, you want to offer a rejoinder to that?
Lawrence O'Donnell: Well Pat, if it gets down to four, you’re suggesting it’s an absolute outrage if the final four are women. If got down to final four and they were all white men, would that bother you in the least?
BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do.
[.....]
Lawrence O'Donnell: Hopeless argument, Pat. It’s like, it's like watching a dead fish flop around on the deck. You’re dead on this one, Pat. It’s all over.
