Pat Buchanan is racist and other observations.

Pat Buchanan has been spewing crazy again. He tussled with Rachel Maddow over the Sotomayor hearings, and the result was an ugly, intolerant, patronizing, self-absorbed train of verbal shit in a week where there was a lot of it to go around. It was racist plain and plain, effortlessly distilled into the one argument that "This country has been built basically by white folks." Yes, that's right, he said it. Rachel Maddow smacked that bitch around a bit, but he needs to be whipped (figuratively, not literally - no violence here). MSNBC needs to stop treating him like a grumpy old man because he ain't just a grumpy old man; he's a grumpy old racist man and there ain't no reason for that to be on television - unless it's some made-for-tv movie on ABC Family (is that channel still around?) about old school bigots back when Jim Crow was still flying high. Daily Kos breaks it down but you can find similar chatter all over the blogs. Bastard.

Glenn Greenwald offers an enlightened take on Walter Cronkite's passing, more specifically on the self-serving journalistic lovefest that these tv tributes are turning into. I'm glad he wrote about it because I had similar feelings watching Anderson Cooper 360 today. The Silver Fox gave a short memorial but he wasn't anchoring; in his place was John King who waxed lyrical about Uncle Walter's lasting contributions to journalism and to the nation and about his irreplaceablity. Clearly CNN did not see the irony in pushing two of its pretty stars to expound on the greatness of journalism past. I've said before that I do enjoy some of Cooper's reporting, namely on 60 Minutes, but giving him a show kind of ruins it. Once these cable folks get a show, they have to become a brand. Good reporting doesn't have to be snazzy though; it just has to be good.

U2's I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight. Sounds like a win-win situation. Actually sounds like my daily predicament. From their Letterman appearance earlier this year.