Spittle and scum: Maddow mops up Buchanan’s, CNN averts eyes from Lou Dobbs’

When Rachel Maddow rolled out “Uncle Pat” Buchanan to discuss Judge Sonia Sotomayor last Friday, you just knew that ears were going to bleed and aneurysms were going to pop. I turned the TV off before Buchanan got to take his first deep breath.

Life’s too short.

Buchanan has been doing this schtick for decades, and he’ll do it even after death unless the mortician takes pity on us and sews Pat’s mouth shut with extra-thick sutures.

On Friday night, we all knew what was coming, we just didn’t know how bad the what was coming was going to get.

Here‘s the quick summary: Buchanan insulted everyone in the country since the early 1600s except white males of Celtic descent. Anyone surprised?

On Monday, Maddow systematically debunked all the historical falsehoods screeched and preached by Buchanan on Friday.

Maddow’s very tidy that way.

Now Lou Dobbs -- life’s also too short to pay any attention to him -- is signing on with the Birther Nuts, shaking his pasty and flaccid jowls threateningly about Obama’s being an undocumented alien.

Does this crap really sell non-clumping kitty litter, window cleaner, and room deodorizers? Apparently.

I’m not calling for Buchanan and Dobbs to be yanked from the air, and it would be a futile quest anyway. As far as corporate news media is concerned, the only grounds for such yanking is bad ratings and/or reduced ad revenues. Sex sells. Sexism sells. Racism sells. Conspiracy theories sell. Missing white girls sell. Small controlled wars in which US victory is guaranteed sell. Buchanan and Dobbs are just delivering the goods.

I’m in agreement with Global Comment’s Sarah Jaffe:

Buchanan’s outburst did nothing to stop Sotomayor’s confirmation and perhaps helped speed it along—Republicans not wanting to be associated with Buchanan have an added incentive to vote for Obama’s nominee. But more importantly, the conversation that Maddow and Buchanan had, while distasteful, was a far more honest discussion of the views on race in American society than the perhaps more civilized conversation that went on in the confirmation hearings. We don’t need to fear and silence Buchanan’s views: we need to expose them and show America what racism really is.

Just add Dobbs’ name in the appropriate spots above. After all, the whole Birther thing is really the quest of racists too embarrassed to admit their racism looking for the best non-racist way to deny a black man the US presidency. And they, and Lou Dobbs, are convinced they’ve come up with the ultimate virgin-birth-sort-of technicality.

So let them babble on. For me, as I’ve said, life’s too short. And I've got the internet....