What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?

Jamison Foser
MediaMatters

In the weeks since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, one question has consumed the news media, particularly conservatives in the media: Imagine what would happen if a white man had said the reverse of Sotomayor's famous (and famously distorted) "wise Latina" comment. Media commentators have insisted that such a white man would be denounced as a racist and run out of town on a rail.

That's nonsense. First of all, Sotomayor's actual comments were far more innocuous than the media's portrayal of them would suggest; she was merely noting the importance of judicial diversity in cases involving discrimination, a sentiment that is consistent with statements by numerous prominent conservatives. Second, as Reason magazine's Julian Sanchez has noted, "[I]t would be weird for a white man to say it because it's probably not true that the experience of growing up as a white male in the United States specifically enhances one's understanding of what it means to be a disfavored minority."

Finally, the media debate over Sotomayor has provided a depressing reminder of what does happen to prominent white men who make racist, sexist, and homophobic comments: MSNBC, among others, puts them on payroll and trots them out to opine on matters of race and gender.

MSNBC's history in this regard is well-known. The cable channel gave Michael Savage his own television show, and then had to fire him when he told a caller to "get AIDS and die." It gave Don Imus a television show, and then had to fire him when he called members of the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." It gave Chris Matthews a television show on which he had to issue a bizarre apology after making one sexist comment too many. (No such apology has been forthcoming for his habit of suggesting minorities are not "regular" people.)

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