The Enemy Within

There's been a campaign going on around the blogosphere for awhile, advocating that MSNBC ban Pat Buchanan from appearing on the network. Buchanan is a political analyst, who, in the wake of the tragedy in Norway, wrote an editorial, which appeared to rationalise, if not favour, the motives of the assassin in question, Anders Behring Breivik.


If that were not enough, Buchanan dug himself into a deeper hole, when he appeared as a guest on Rev Al Sharpton's new MSNBC progam, and made reference to the President, using a term with echoes the collective periods of time encompassing the Antebellum South right up through the era of Civil Rights struggles. You can watch the incident, which occurs at about the five-minute mark here.


That's right. Pat Buchanan, political speechwriter, strategist, commentator and one-time Presidential candidate, referred to the President of the United States as a "boy."


Now, I know Pat's past seventy, and he's a man of his era and time. I grew up in the South, and Pat always, for some reason, makes me think of the Virginia history textbook I was made to study in the Seventh Grade. I don't think it had been re-written in sixty years, and that was in the mid-1960s. Every five years or so, the publishers would tack another couple of chapters onto the end of the thing, as time passed and more events occurred; but in Virginia, in 1966, in the wake of historic Civil Rights legislation passing, we were still being taught how happy and gay (as in contented) African Americans were when they were enslaved, chattel, someone else's property and not their own person.


The quaint little drawings showed plump, well-fed people, dressed simply, but smartly, dancing happily around a campfire and receiving gifts of a ham at Christmas. We were taught that masters and mistresses were kind, and that their slaves didn't really want to be free. I think Pat bought into this too. In fact, I think he genuinely believed and still believes malarkey like this.


But, rightly, politely and forcefully, Rev Sharpton upbraided him on this slip-of-the-tongue. When Pat referred to the President as "your boy, Barack Obama," the reverend was ready:-

He’s nobody’s boy– he’s your president, he’s our president, and that’s what ya’ll don’t get through your head.

Rev Sharpton, that's what a lot of people don't get through their heads.


The next night, Lawrence O'Donnell, had as his guest, Arianna Huffington. I've followed Huffington's career for about thirty years. She's the privleged daughter of a corrupt Greek politician, whose family fled Greece in the socialist coup of the early 1960s. Huffington, nee Stanisopoulos, is a prime example of someone who has used money and sex to climb both the social and professional ladders.


Following her academic career at Cambridge, she expected to be welcomed with opened arms into the British political media, most of whom are traditionally centre-Leftish; but Huffington was so far to the Right in those days, she made Phyllis Schlafly look like a weeping Nellie atheist. She wrote a couple of books, and got sued for extensive plagiarism in one of them. In fact, plagiarism follows Huffington like a lost puppy, as does unethical journalistic methods.


She decamped to the US in the early 1980s and suddenly became BFF with Baba Wawa, no mean social climber, herself. Then she managed to marry Michael Huffington, a closeted gay politician, who needed a wife for his image as much as Arianna needed a (rich) American husband in order to stay in the country. Huffington was a neocon and to the Left of Madam, who was still rabidly Rightwing.


He served as a Congressman from California for two years in the 1990s, hoping to win a Senate seat in 1996 from Diane Feinstein. (He lost). I've no doubt, had he won, he may even have attempted a run for the White House in 2000 or 2004. Imagine Zsa Zsa Mach II as our First Lady!


Also, during the 90s, Arianna developed a penchant for Newt Gingrich and a pathological hatred for all things Clinton. She contributed to George W Bush's Presidential campaigns, not once, but twice, and suddenly woke up on the morning of November 3, 2004, the day Dubya officially became Lame Duck plus three, and experienced a full-on Damascene conversion, declaring herself no longer a neocon, but a 100% dyed-in-the-wool Progressive.


No questions asked, no details given, the shallow and insipid 24/7 news media accepted her as the new and fully-fledged voice of the Left.


In another space and time, she would have been called a ratfucker, because since Barack Obama's inauguration, she's worked steadily and consistently to ructure irreparably the Left. It was she, as well as Jane Hamsher, who made sure that the Firebaggers (who inhabit the opposite side of the political coin from the Teabaggers, but who share with them a single brain cell) were sufficiently conflicted to believe that the President was weak, spineless, a tool of Wall Street, a closet Republican, a war mongerer, an enemy of the people, especially the Middle Class.


In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Midterms, she trolled the United States, being given almost unlimited airtime on MSNBC, to tell all and sundry of the middle class that "the President just isn't that into you."


Almost as much as Ed Schultz, another ex-neocon rapidly converted to progressivism, she was instrumental in ensuring that people on the Left, who should have voted, sulked out the vote and gave us the Tea Party Congress we loathe and detest today - and all the while, referring to the President as "nowhere man."


Last night, she set up her shingle on O'Donnell's show, to talk about the debt ceiling agreement, and immediately offered this choice titbit about the President:-

I think he needs intense therapy, to explain to himself first of all why he did what he did, because there is no rational explanation.

All said with that maliciously sweet butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth smile plastered to her greasy, botoxed face.


That was a pernicious remark, which exhibited the utmost contempt and disrespect for this man. She's a nasty piece of work, totally without tact or class. A person whom, in the words of Oscar Wilde, knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.


She is, above all, the embodiment of white privileged elitism, from the debutante daughters to the flaunting of her own brand for her own purposes.


Oh, and she still cahoots with Newt.


But what dismayed me the most about the entire segment of the O'Donnell show is the way the host let her spew her disrespectful venom without once taking her to task.


Kudos to Rev Sharpton, who didn't stint in reminding a long-time political operative from the other side, that a modicum of respect was due the President of the United States. Neither is it mete to imply, snarkily or otherwise, that this President is mentally or emotionally unfit enough to require therapy, but it seems that the President and anyone who supports him now not only are told regularly by the Professional Left that they need professional help or that they really are Republican trolls (like the President is a secret Republican) paid by Andrew Breitbart or that they're "the dumbest motherfuckers," we're now deemed "starry-eyed followers", like the adherents to some sick cult.


I guess the question we are left to ponder is why Rev Sharpton was quick and right to call out blatant disrespect, and Lawrence O'Donnell wasn't?