What Is Pat Buchanan Good For?

Atrios gives him the World's Worst Person badge today, because of Pat's clever statements about the obvious link between same-sex marriage and the Sandunsky child abuse case.





I have written about Pat's views on us wimmin in the past. But Pat is an equal-opportunity-bigot, pretty much.

Hence the question in the title of this post. Why is a man like that always invited to political debates on television?

Here's my guess for the answer: The American mainstream media views acceptable political opinions along a half-line. It has an absolute starting point, the most extreme lefty opinions allowed on television, and those tend to be pretty milquetoast ones. No fire-breathing lefties on American television, never.

Indeed, this left end-point used to consist of what I call courteous conservatives. It has been pushed back a bit, but not by much.

The other end point, however, is always the most foaming-at-the-mouth wingnut bigot you can possibly unearth, always! That's why I call the system not a line but a half-line (probably not the real name for something like that), because the right end-point can be moved further and further out, so that it always allows for the extremest of the extremists!

I don't mind having Buchanan on television, not at all. What I DO mind is that we are not allowed to have his lefty equivalent on television.

This imbalance works out equally strongly when it comes to feminism, by the way. The anti-feminists always get invited to the shows, the so-called feminist side might consist of only the interviewing journalists who try to take a middle-of-the-road or he-says-she-says-but-some-people-believe stance.

All US mainstream debates are biased by the way the extreme opinions are picked, and the bias works in favor of the conservative and anti-feminist views.