The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

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Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

John999 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:04:26 -0000

Byebye John

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

sv — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:23:22 -0000

sigh. i shoulda kept my big mouth shut.... that's what happens when you talk first and think second, these gratuitous racist insults just made me too mad (+ i was at work). thanks for the corrections though.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

sv — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:13:42 -0000

oh, right, sorry - that's who i was thinking of. thanks.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

MikeSchilling — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:26:59 -0000

"Buchanan" is a Scottish name. He just plays Irish on TV.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

MikeSchilling — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:23:48 -0000

Quick, tell me an author of modern fiction who's used 'soporific' lately.

Most of them. (Sorry, those are authors who have been soporific.)

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Deborah — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:59:25 -0000

Dave, you're mixing up two types of AA, consideration in college admissions and grade and class rank.

No one is denying that AA had a role in her admission to Stanford. As many have pointed out taking the top graduates from any high school is a good way to do class/economic based affirmative action, and to identify students who will take whatever resources they're offered and then thrive. That is, she was not a random Latina, she was a Latina who took everything her high school could offer and kicked butt. An excellent choice.

The point where you and Buchanon lose all the sane people is claiming that all her achievements--valedictorian, grades at Stanford, professional achievements--are obviously due to AA. AA is usually applied to school admissions and to first jobs. Buchanon is claiming that her grades and positions held at Stanford and Yale are part of a massive conspiracy. Either address that, or quit pretending the topic is her admission to Stanford rather than what she accomplished while there.

And Eric is very right about being in the right place at the right time....one that stuck with me is a kid whose science project involved time on an accelerator. Now, it was an excellent project and the kid was very gifted. But there are physics professionals who can't get accelerator time, but because this kid's dad was friends with the people running the accelerator he got time for his project. Comparing his project to that of kids' whose parents can't get them accelerator time is apples and oranges.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Deborah — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:47:35 -0000

Would scones with clotted cream be involved? I would be on board with that.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

brucds — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:34:52 -0000

Yes Dave, and that's why - as Shelby Steele pointed out - someone like Barack Obama could never get elected President. Oh...wait a minute.

But it's true that all of these questions about Sotomayor's fitness are cloaked in issues around affirmative action and "reverse racism." I liked the old bigotry better when a Pat Buchanan was open about the fact that he didn't like such folks simply because of their race.

Have you considered that such questions are an inherent side-effect of white racism, rather than affirmative action, and that may be the problem that should be addressed. Buchanan's comments certainly point my antennae in that direction.

I don't feel any defensiveness about Sotomayor, for what that's worth. Maybe your perception about defensiveness is a reflection that some of her "defenders" are being too polite or timid in calling out her critics for what they are.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

hillary1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:30:23 -0000

"Anyway this notion that two Ivy League schools nefariously plotted to make Sonia Sotomayor number one in her class and then editor of the Yale Law Review, is not simply unserious, but paranoid. Really fucking paranoid."

You're just NOW figuring out that Pat Buchanan is an unstable racist? Where have you been the past 40 years??? This is par for the course and even tame for him, actually.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

DaveinHackensack — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:02:58 -0000

Ta-Nehisi,

My comment wasn't in response to your post, but in response to the defensiveness I've seen among your commenters in previous threads on this subject when someone questions to what extent Judge Sotomayor's achievements have been due to Affirmative Action. My point in my comment above was that it's an inherent side-effect of Affirmative Action that such questions will get raised of any AA beneficiary. Perhaps I should have made this comment in your open thread instead.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

jip — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:48:49 -0000

"Lay out the Sotomayor record -- SAT scores, LSAT scores..."

Yes, terrific idea Pat! Better yet, instead of using names, why don't we simply refer to the justices by their law schools and LSAT scores? That way, I'd know that Harvard 175 was way smarter than Stanford 172 and that Yale 169 was the SC equivalent of a dribbling goon. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the smartest.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Kylopod — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:09:29 -0000

My point is he wouldn't make fun of Narnia as children's books, because he'd see them as religious literature.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Aubrey Maturin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:59:51 -0000

Pat is a scared old man. Ignore him. Sotomayor has heard worse. She knows what she achieved.

Eyes on the prize. Not enough black and Latino kids succeed in higher education. That's the problem. Pat and guys like him are not the problem. Pat is not the one keeping a kid from turning off the tv and doing his homework. Nor is he the guy distracting a child from paying attention in class, and strive for and gut out an honor roll. He is a loudmouth with a hateful prejudice, but he is not holding black and Latino kids back academically.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

sporcupine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:37:46 -0000

Dave,

Methinks you're looking at higher education from the outside. Schools don't grade students. Individual professors do, and at places like Princeton, professors utterly, fiercely, tenaciously reject any attempt by the administration to adjust anything at all. This is the briar patch in which I was born and bred, and in which I still live and breathe. There is absolutely no way under the sun that anyone at Princeton other than an individual professor could decide to tilt a grade.

Beyond which, professors in those places don't, in general, give a damn about affirmative action. They don't go the extra mile for a student starting out without advantages. They don't go the extra yard. They don't check their own work for bias or for expecting background knowledge they shouldn't expect. One or two or three per school, out of 100 or more, maybe, decides to worry about whether non-white students are getting a fair shake. Maybe. That's true right here, right now. It was twice as true in the seventies.

And you're right that she wouldn't be where she is now if she weren't a Latina female. If she was a white guy with with a grandfather who went to Yale, she'd be general counsel to General Motors, worth $127 million dollars, and vice chair of the Republican National Committee.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

sporcupine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:07:20 -0000

She's a Democratic nominee. He'd complain. If she was a white guy he'd complain, but he might feel an obligation to come up with something less transparently absurd.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Michael H. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:41:16 -0000

That articule is so incredibly stupid it makes my head hurt. Its as if white people in general and white men in particular are under attack from all sides from all of these "unqualified" people of color!!!!!!! That garbage doesn't deserve the a logical counter argument.

I will say this, I feel like the right wing/conservatist extremist/racist/whatever you what to call them have the benefit of never having to defend their position, its assumed to be correct while those on the opposite side of the debate have to counter their incoherent and unreasonsed positions. Going forward, if "they" are not able to put together a well reasoned argument, I say we ignore them!

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

eric k — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:27:37 -0000

Dave,

She never denied benefiting from AA. She like Colin Powell is a poster child for AA. They show how it is supposed to work. An obviously talented and very smart woman (valedictorian of her high school class) scores lower on the standardized tests than someone with her high school grades normally would be expected to. The admission people take her entire situation into account and assume that she will be able to make it. Turns out they were right and then some since she thrived. Yeah it would be great if we lived in a perfect world and admissions people could look at every student with as much detail and correctly identify which ones are likely to perform better than a standardized test says they will. But since we don't have that perfect world we'll just have to keep making due with the flawed one we have and use imperfect methods like AA for some things.

You are making the classic conservative mistake here and assuming that because she got in with the help of AA that means she didn't deserve it. Who actually deserves to get into any college? It isn't like there is some absolute standard that says we can exactly rank all the high school seniors in the country every year and then give #1 their first choice of college, then the next most qualified gets to choose and so on and so on like some sports draft. After you go past the totally corrupt legacy stuff, the truth is for the rest of the students the whole process involves a lot of just pure random luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing someone who knows someone and so on. Under the circumstances using AA as one of the factors is an imperfect solution but it is one of the few we have.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:12:33 -0000

Dave,

As always, I need you to specifically quote the portion of this post that you disagree with. I can respond a little better, if you do that.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Bronx Bomber — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:07:41 -0000

Huh? So you get an opportunity to compete with the big boys, you beat their ass, and somehow your achievements are questionable? Is Jackie Robinson's career now in doubt just because he was the first beneficiary of AA? Since when do test scores reflect an entire persons capability or value added to a school? Do you want the guy with the 1600 score who stays in his room all day and night or the girl with the 1350 score who volunteers, plays sports and starts up social activity clubs?

I highly doubt you'd be where you were if you were a black male born in the slums of the Bronx with a single mother and 5 brothers/sisters. Should I start questioning your status in life too?

You born on 3rd base types who swear yall hit triples wanna boo hoo when someone else winds up on 3rd too? Only in America!!!

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Tim McGaha — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:05:48 -0000

Anagram generator ... excellent suggestion!

Okay, this is just surreal: Goriest Joy! A No-Sumo Ad.

I suppose the good news is that there's no way to connect that to the good Judge without the assistance of about a metric ton of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

brucds — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:53:13 -0000

Dave - your ass is showing.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

Jonathan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:49:46 -0000

You know... I agree that he was speaking to that person. That's clearly who's most receptive to his message... but it's not who's he's speaking *for*.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

JAD1973 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:46:51 -0000

I wish they could just put Pat Buchanan in a rocket ship to Mars where all his batshit crazy will go unnoticed.

Re: Black Helicopters And Pat Buchanan

DaveinHackensack — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:45:38 -0000

Me thinks some of you doth protest a little much re Sotomayor and affirmative action. Let's review some facts:

1) She admitted she was a beneficiary of AA.

2) She admitted that her test scores weren't as high as that of most of her classmates.

3) She and the Puerto Rican student group she joined sued Princeton when she was a student there, demanding that it hire more Hispanic faculty. Would it be paranoid to wonder whether the school might have graded her a little more generously after that, out of fear of more litigation?

4) Liberal commentators such as Rosen questioned Sotomayor's temperament and intellect before any rabble-rousers on the right did.

All that said, I still think Sotomayor should get confirmed (and will get confirmed). She's got the qualifications on paper (circuit court judgeship, etc.) and it's Obama's prerogative. But the reality of Affirmative Action is that the achievements of AA beneficiaries will always be questioned by those who wonder to what extent those achievements were due to AA. If you want some people to get a boost based on their gender and ethnicity, then you can't complain if people ask to what extent that boost got them where they are, and to what extent it was their own hard work and abilities. No question Sotomayor has worked hard, but it also seems doubtful that she would be where she is if she weren't a Latina female.