Tag Archives: Joan Walsh

Is it accidental hagiography or just the world’s worst hit piece?

Pat Buchanan is still a colossal racist asshole, but Joan Walsh’s review of Buchanan’s new book*** is almost as bad as she spends nearly every word lashing together a raft to float on the sea of Uncle Pat’s haterade just to show how morally superior she is when it comes to the really, terribly high bar of calling him out on his rampant racism.  It’s not like that’s difficult to do, you merely have to possess a working soul and some basic self-awareness, but Walsh strays dangerously close to using Buchanan’s odious tract to play the “earth may be flat, views differ” game, almost as if she has a need to do so….and then does a terrible job of it.  This is evident in the last third of the piece, especially these two paragraphs.  First:

The end of the book contains Buchanan’s template for success in 2012, which consists of restricting trade, halting immigration, slashing federal spending and — one point many progressives will agree with – “dismantling the empire,” and dramatically cutting military spending. (There’s a reason why when I first started out doing MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,” I frequently agreed with Buchanan, as long as we discussed the Iraq war.)

Now, let’s understand the context here:  Walsh has just spent about 2000 words up until this point saying that at best Buchanan is Gollum, a creature driven by his most base desires that should be pitied and viewed as an instructional relic, a walking warning label who serves best as a cautionary tale…and then on arguably the most important single American policy decision in the last ten years, she says she “frequently agreed” with Buchanan.  I’m a little confused by that, it certainly seems Walsh more than pities the man if she can see eye to eye on him on Iraq.  She’s saying he has his good points too, after spending so much time portraying him as without redemption.

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