Populist elitists

We really must play buzz-word bingo more often with Pat Buchanan. In his column today he manages to create such a powerfully oxymoronic construction that it would clear the card and be awarded an automatic bingo in any game.

The subject is his good friend Don Imus. Buchanan sputters with outrage through a full column of incoherent and badly assembled talking points. He says that the remarks of Imus and Bernie McGurkin about the Rutgers women's basketball team were indefensible, and then proceeds to defend them. If black rappers get to use those words, how come racist white guys can't? How come no one is apologizing to the Duke lacrosse team? Al Sharpton was wrong about Tawana Brawley. What about the First Amendment?* Then he drops this masterpiece:

Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite opinion – and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree.

Got that? It was those elitists giving the people what they wanted. Or maybe it was those populists who think they know better than everybody else. Unless by "mob" he means the Mafia, that paragraph makes no sense at all.

As an old master panderer to momentary public hysteria and agitator of lynch mobs, Buchanan should be ashamed of himself. But then, he should be ashamed just for being Pat Buchanan. That's never stopped him.

* In order: Rappers who call women "hos" are jerks and many people call them on it. People are apologizing to the Duke lacrosse team. What does Tawana Brawley have to do with anything? The First Amendment has nothing to do with who a corporation chooses to fire or not fire.