I am a white man, an old white man, a rich old white man, by any reasonable measure; and Pat Buchanan is right. I am full of resentment. Let me tell you what I resent.
I resent a jackass like Pat Buchanan busting a vein about how white working men suffer when an 'undeserving' poor woman like Sonia Sotomayor gets ahead in the world by virtue of her own ability and her own skills.
I resent Buchanan saying she didn't deserve her admission, her grades, her awards, her editorship, her success as a lawyer, as a judge. If I could reach through the Internet tubes I would smack him silly.
More of my resentments below the fold.
I resent watching my father work three jobs to feed our family, watching my mother sew mens suits for 30 years, and then watching rich-kid punks like George W. Bush have life handed to them because of their daddy's name and their granddaddy's money.
I resent the Henry Ford VIII's of the world getting their first paying job as an executive vice-president when mine was cleaning toilets and my father's was landing poor white soldiers and marines on a fire-stormed beach at Okinawa.
I resent that black men and women were firehosed, beaten, killed by men like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III because they dared demand the most basic human rights and justice.
I resent rich white men complaining because the merest handful of the poor; white, black, red, yellow or brown; are given a chance to show what they can do after decades of being spit on by the Pat Buchanans of the world.
I resent Pat Buchanan pretending to defend the white working man when for all his life he has done nothing but defend the privilege of the rich against me, my family, my brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, and cultures who were denied a seat at the table reserved for the bluebloods, regardless of their ability.
I am a proud product of a public kindergarten, public elementary school, public junior high school, public high school, two land-grant universities, a government graduate fellowship and a decade's work treating the seriously mentally ill for the government. I spent half of my life on the educational dole, and I resent seeing rich kids with half my brains and a tenth my work ethic waltzing into Ivy League schools because they have the right name and the right private school background. I resent that Buchanan has no problem with THEM taking seats from deserving poor white men.
I resent seeing my wife's family business, 75 years old and into its third generation, threatened by a herd of Wall Street bankers who wrecked the economy to line their own pockets, with the enthusiastic support of the Pat Buchanans of this world.
Don't let Buchanan fool you. He doesn't give a shit about working class white men. He cares only about defending the privileges of the wealthy few against any gains by the working class and the poor.
Wake Up America! It is not about race, it is about wealth, the privilege of wealth and the maintenance of wealth! And I will resent it to my dying day.
Addendum Fri 10pm Eastern
I want to thank all of you for your kind words and especially for your challenges. Buchanan's ilk see Sotomayor as a product of reverse racism and think that white men will see her as a threat. To me she isn't a threat, she is a model of what can happen when someone with no chance gets one chance. There are dozens of similar stories in this thread and I thank all those who shared them and inspired us all.