Buchanan attacks Sonia Sotomayor for trying to perfect her English. He does this while attending an "English only"conference. Where the banner misspelled "conference." Unbelievable.
More believable--Buchanan's copanelist urged the GOP to appeal to "young whites" and "yellow people." I'm sure all the "yellow people" are feeling the love. I know I am. And I'm only a little red.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
It's strange to harp on children's classics especially. Many YA and children's books are masterworks of efficient language and narrative. I'm thinking CS Lewis and Ray Bradbury and such.
But anyway, speaking for the yellow, I'd say amongst every much every Asian-American I know, official affirmative action "discrimination" or whatever isn't even on the map in terms of priority (Fix the evaporated finance and law market and then maybe they can buy the yellow vote).
The model minority stereotype comes with own burden, no one I know is deluded enough to believe that they have it harder in the job/education market than other darker minorities.
Since when was Bradbury children's lit?
To the extent Huck Finn and Pride and Prejudice, which she was reading, are children's lit. I.e. things you might read in High School English class.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing Pat Buchanan himself has read "Pride and Prejudice." Heaven only knows what Jane Austen would have had to say about him.
He DID on the other hand read Huck Finn.
But he was distracted from the main theme--social hypocrisy is defeated by defiance of its fundamental values of oppression and bigotry--by the fact that this kid was naked on a raft with a big black guy.
Was the banner really misspelled? Because that may be the rarely sighted failure trifecta.
I'm pretty sure everyone had to read Fahrenheit 451 at some point in school. I also read Something Wicked This Way Comes, but that was optional.
Well, I don't know if it's official but I read The Martian Chronicles when I was ten and I was reading Asimov by the time I was eight, so I'm going to say somewhere between 1987 to 1989.
Yeah, I was assigned Bradbury in middle school, and he was one of my favorite writers as a teenager, but I've never seen his books in the children's or young adult's section of a library or bookstore. Besides, lot of us geeks used to read "adult" sci-fi when we were kids. (I first read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was ten.)
As a person of color AND a young person, the GOP will get you yet, Ta-Nehisi. They Have a Plan. Like the cylons.
Also, in the new age of GOP twittering spelling is passe, so long as you misspell only in English.
Plan:
First, alienate everyone not locked deeply in our base.
Second, ????
Third, victory!
From TNR's The Plank today:
Maybe he meant cowards?
Oh. Oh, my God. "Layers" of fail doesn't even begin to describe it. This is like the geometric progression of fail, or an exploding colony of fail bacteria. But dumber.
In every fail, there is a win. And the win here is for hilarity. (You don't destroy bitter old trolls like Pat Buchanan by debating them, you destroy them by laughing at them. Repeatedly, and without remorse.)
This is fractal fail: no matter how far you zoom in, there's still more fail. And Craig's right, the only way to respond to this is to point and laugh.
Although, this former spelling-bee competitor dies a little inside whenever he sees a sign, made by alleged professionals, with such an obvious and easily-corrected error... Spell check FTW!
Damn! I was going to write "fractal fail," and I didn't go with it. You're totally right -- it's an ever-branching infinity of failure.
"Yellow people" is his PC term for "coolie."
hahaha... good lord i haven't heard 'coolie' in a long time
Fractal Fail = WIN!
This cartoon seems relevant again.
Good luck with that whole outreach to "young yellow" folks as China's ascendance will no doubt inspire the resurrection of all kinds of "Yellow Peril" paranoia.
ThinkProgress - the first link in this post - is like an MMFA for grade schoolers. MMFA frequently smears and comes to the wrong conclusion, but they mostly get the basic facts rights. TP can't even rise to that low level.
If Ta-Nehisi Coates were smart and interested in the truth, he would have pointed that out to you. He would have also acknowledged that highlighting one misspelled banner is in itself "fail". He would have also pointed out the other things the TP link got wrong. For instance, compare what TP says about vdare.com to this: vdare.com/pb/060724_vdare.htm
And, if Ta-Nehisi Coates were smart and interested in the truth, he would have noted that Obama promoted English speakers learning Spanish rather than encouraging the opposite. I'm going to guess that Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't even know about even more shocking Obama statements like this one, or the various lies he's told such as 24ahead.com/blog/archives/008027.html or 24ahead.com/blog/archives/008013.html
Uh oh. I set Ta-Nehisi Coates up with a counter-argument:
they mostly get the basic facts rights
Dude, is it remotely possible for you to blog-whore in a more interesting way?
Because this comment makes me want to print out everything you've written...and burn it. Before reading. I just don't have the IQ points to spare for this kind of laziness.
Having pre-written comments that just require you to fill in the blog authors' name does sort of utterly fail to encourage inquiring minds to visit his site, doesn't it?
He's even lazier than a Mexican, really...
Troll Food:
There's irony in complaining that the candidate for Souter's spot on the Supreme Court is busted for using literary classics such as Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice to brush up her English (though Huck Finn was probably the first case of a young white who had picked up on black vernacular and as a result had his spoken English inflected by it) at an English only conference in which the folks who are demanding English mispell a word in their banner. It's not the mistake 24--everyone makes mistakes, even English only writers getting their facts correct--but the irony of it.
And anyone who finds it outrageous that our President suggests in a 21st Century world in which we are a twitter away from everyone that our children learn Spanish, the second most widely used language in the world, and the predominate language of the Americas south of our border all the way to the bottom tip of Argentina, to my way of thinking, neither realizes that a large proportion of our population spoke German up to WW 1 and a very small part of our poplation emigrated from the British Isles, nor that we won our independence from Great Britain 223 years ago, and thinks its a glory to our nation to remain ignorant.
Calling the blog host stupid and a liar, then using your post as linkspam to your own lame blog?
Fail.
Must... resist. Don't.... feed. Don't......click. Give....troll.....nothing.
Dude, all your links to your own site makes you look like an internet crazy person. I'm sorry if that comes off as an Ad Hominem, but it's the like the first rule of etiquette to not link to your own site in order to back up your arguments.
lawl. ur so banned.
If only Matt policed his blog so diligently.
For serious.
Call this a stupid WoW question, but how did we go from "LOL" to "lawl"? Any thoughts on the next stage in these developments?
Listen, I have learned to accept misspellings on blogs (grudgingly, and mostly because I know it is already a lost battle), but as a graphic designer, misspelled signs make me want to kill someone. There is no excuse. Luckily, the "working class white Democrats" they are appealing to are too dumb to spell correctly anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. (At least, that's what Pat's kind really thinks.) I'm glad that Pat is exposing himself for who he really is these days because I was softening toward him as the crazy uncle type watching all his exchanges with Rachel Maddow during the elections. Now I can see good 'ol Pat is just an old-fashioned bigot who likes the "old bigotry."
I'm with you on this one. This sign had to be printed professionally, it's not like someone used construction paper and a sharpie!
If I were running that event and saw that mispelling, I would have never hung up the sign - it just screams stooopid!
Yep. Levels of fail in just getting that sign up there in the first place. Someone sent the copy to the printing company, someone at the printing company set it up and printed it, then allowed it to leave the shop printed, it arrive to the event, and someone decided to hang it even though it was misspelled.
I didn't get the memo: when did it become a bad thing to speak more than one language? As much as I like MSNBC, somehow I just don't think this really epic fail will be noted on any of their programs. Hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so. "Uncle" Pat is one of their own. And when will he explain exactly how Judge Sotomayor rigged Phi Beta Kapa, her high school and college grade point averages, her undergraduate prize and the Yale Law Review?
I just want to shout to them all "I am not Margaret Dumont!" Marx bros. fans will remember that Ms. Dumont was Groucho's permanent comic foil to whom he once said so memorably "who are you going to believe? Me or your lyin' eyes!"
I would say to you.. ' They really didn't say Yellow People'...but then again, let's look at who we're talking about...OF COURSE THEY DID.
sigh.
In a few decades, when self-identified white Americans comprise a minority portion of the population, Pat Buchanan and guys like him will be viewed as prophets to a large part of the lower-income, low-social-status whites people who harbor resentment at the new order of things. These large demographic changes don't occur without social conflict and political firefights. What is an America "dominated" by African, Latino, and Asian ethnic character layered on top of 300 years of white politics and culture? There will be strong resistance to the impacts of these inescapable demographic trends.
I sense the hate from Buchanan. But I also suspect it comes from vulnerability, not from haughty superiority. He's fearful. The more we laugh at and mock the sense of insecurity and injustice that finds expression in these vile statements, I think the anger deepens. Education, integration, dialogue, "group therapy," there's a lot of work to be done. Shouldn't you fight the "bad" with the "good?" Martin Luther King used to paraphrase Jesus, urging his listeners to fight hate with love -- hate just begets hate, wars more wars until we're falling into the "dark abyss of annihilation."
I could agree with you AM except that America has not had 300 years of white culture and politics, particularly not culture. African Americans, Hispanics and Asians didn't get here a couple of years ago or even a couple of decades ago. We have always been here, helping to create and contributing to what is and has always been an American culture and political society unique to the world. We won't be "layering" on top of anything because from day one we helped build this country and create this culture. And African Americans, Hispanics and Asians won't be suddenly dominating this country, we are all and have always been Americans, ergo, Americans will continue to dominate America. The problem is people like Buchanan, for whatever reason--racism, fear (tho' what did we ever do to White people to prompt this fear?) insecurity--have been in denial for centuries.
You're right about the wholly American identity of Hispanic, Black, and Asian ethnic groups in this country. You're also right about the essential imprint of these Americans on our history and culture.
But I think I'm correct in saying that the combination of (1) massive non-European immigration post WWII, and (2) the sharp rise of African American political and social achievement since the Civil Rights era has been unique in our history and as these trends gain scale over the next few decades, the effects could be revolutionary. Put another way, it's a lot of change in a relatively short period of time. I think Pat Buchanan is fearful of what may come. Friends and colleagues who I respect and value may also share a smidgen of these fears. As demographic trends march on, I think it will be important to secure the equality and equity achieved thus far by recognizing the concerns of the future minority and trying to address them constructively.
Africans brought to these shores as slaves centuries ago was, in fact, "massive non-European immigration." The annexation of Mexican territory almost two hundred years ago was a form of "massive non-European immigration." The Chinese laborers who helped build American rail roads were a pretty big "non-European immigration." If we've been here for so long, what exactly is Pat Buchanan afraid of? What does he think, or what do you think he thinks may come? What exactly are your friends and colleagues afraid of? That's an honest question, one that I have never been able to answer. Can you?
Another question. What exactly about African American political and social achievement since the Civil Rights era has the potential to be "revolutionary?" Jewish, Irish, Italian immigrants all did the same things, in pretty much the same ways (except of course for the lynchings and dogs and the hoses parts.) One more: does my equality in America still need to be secured? Why?
Actually, it's an interesting question whether the current ongoing demographic change is unique in our history. Are the changes going on bigger than during the massive waves of immigration from Ireland, Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe? Or the social changes as the Northeast industrialized? Or the social changes after the end of slavery and the civil war? Or the transition from mostly local government to mostly federal government controlling things? Or the transition between women almost never working professional jobs (and usually not working outside the home once married, if they had any choice at all) to more than half the law and medical school graduates being women? Or the near-complete collapse of the rust belt?
Previous non-white population influxes involved those migrants being actively oppressed (slaves, coolies, farm laborers) and socially/politically subordinated to white majorities in their new homes. Recent years have seen non-white groups earn full citizenship alongside white Americans.
I think this equality is new and unsettling to groups who are used to seeing visibly different (color) people in inferior social/political class. Individually, issues of pride, self-regard, and envy fuel resentment at the rise of a clearly different group outside your own. It was different with Italians, Irish, etc., because they could visibly assimilate over a few generations. They could "pass" as part of the dominant sub-group and plenty tried because they could.
My point is that this nativist, defensive reaction by some like Buchanan has a likelihood of growing over the next few decades given trends. Some of these people truly feel under siege. It doesn't come from an evil place, it's human and understandable -- it comes from a conservative frame of mind that's wary of unknown consequences of change.
Yellow people? People with jaundice? Huh?
Again, wow.
Patrick J. Buchanan: the gift that just keeps on giving... to Jon Stewart.
Patrick J. Buchanan: the gift that just keeps on giving... to Jon Stewart.
Remember when they said Jon Stewart would run out of material once Bush was out of office?
There's this theme I've seen a lot in the last year or so, in which both Obama and Sotomayor get their academic achievements questioned due to affirmative action. Buchanan's comments about what books she was reading to polish up her English fit into that pattern.
Here's what I think is going on there: Some largish fraction of the kind of voters/readers Buchanan is looking for are convinced, deep down, that it's just not possible that Obama or Sotomayor were among the brightest people in their top-tier law schools. Knowing their conclusion, they are very receptive to "evidence" that supports it. So, for them, snarking on the books she read in college, or implying that affirmative action not only got her into top-tier schools, but also got her top grades, is pretty effective. It's what a lot of his listeners/readers want, even need, to believe. It lets those listeners spin a story in which the world is still consistent with their beliefs and hopes.
This general phenomenon is called Confirmation Bias. It's very common, and very hard to avoid doing. I think Buchanan is exploiting confirmation bias on the part of his listeners/readers, and maybe fooling himself with it, too.
They've demanded SAT scores from both. As in, we can't judge their work in the offices they've held over the years; what we really need is to see the SAT scores they racked up at 16 or 17.
I'm younger than both and my SAT scores haven't been relevant to any job I might want for two decades.
Perhaps he was trying to appeal to the Simpsons?