Less than 24 hours after referring to President Obama as “your boy,” MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan went on Morning Joe, and tried to “clarify” his poor choice of words on Tuesday, when describing Mr. Obama to Rev. Al Sharpton.
“Let me clarify something that happened last night on the Al Sharpton show, a very spirited discussion. I was asked who was the big losers in these battles, and the big winners. And I said one of the big losers, using boxing terminology, was ‘your boy’ and I meant the President of the United States. . . . This was taken – some folks took what I said as some kind of slur – none was meant, none was intended, none was delivered – for the record.
But this is just one occurrence. Buchanan is known for walking the edge with the careless statements he’s made in the past.
When Barack Obama was campaigning for President back in 2008, questions about statements his one time pastor Jeremiah Wright made, dominated the news. Mr. Obama felt it was necessary to answer his critics by delivering a speech about race relations – a conversation about race. Pat Buchanan decided to write a response to Mr. Obama’s speech, where he attempted to make the point that “White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.” Buchanan wrote;
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
… Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Buchanan also bought into the ‘Donald Trump talking point’ that President Obama was too dumb to achieve high levels of education, in some of the most prestigious schools in America. Buchanan stated that affirmative action was responsible for the President’s acceptance into these schools.
And who could forget “The Blacks?” That was how Donald Trump referred to New York’s black population, when he was asked if he worried about getting their vote. Trump answered that he has “a great relationship with the blacks, I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”
Of course, this disparaging reference outraged many of “the blacks,” in New York and around the country, but Pat Buchanan saw nothing wrong with Trump’s statement. Buchanan went on MSNBC and defended Donald Trump, saying, “I don’t find any malice in what he said in the statement about the black folks.” Buchanan then tried to water down Trump’s statement, by saying if someone referred to the members of his religion by calling them “the Catholics,” he will not be offended.
These are just a small fraction of the many times Buchanan has made race-baiting statements. So today when Mr. Buchanan offered his so-called clarification, is there anyone out there who really believes this one-time presidential candidate was taken out of context? Is there anyone who believes the rest of the world heard his “your boy” reference and everyone collectively and mis-heard or misunderstood the innocent Buchanan?
The odds are highly unlikely. Buchanan is a calculated Republican pundit, a strategist who knows exactly what he wants to say and what message he intends to deliver. When he called the President “your boy,” he wasn’t misunderstood, on the contrary. Those words coming from the mouth of Pat Buchanan only had one meaning, and the rest of America, the world, knew exactly what he meant.
