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Jon Stewart took his viewers though some of the "highlights" of this week's Presidential inauguration, whether it was the media freaking out over whether or not Beyonce was lip syncing the national anthem, to Chuck Schumer overseeing the activities, to the media's reaction to President Obama's speech.

MSNBC was full of praise, Fox was doing their usual and broadcasting from some alternative universe where the likes of Peter Johnson, Sean Hannity, Stuart Varney and racist "Uncle Pat" Buchanan reside and then we had CNN, who had their anchors on fashion patrol.

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MSNBC got rid of this old racist relic, but Fox just had to drag him back on the air so he can spout hatred like this -- Pat Buchanan: If Welfare Is Like "A Narcotic," "Obama Is A Drug Dealer Of Welfare".

I guess Pat didn't want to allow his sister to be the only Buchanan on the air out there embarrassing themselves carrying water for this debacle of a Romney campaign.

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We finally got Pat Buchanan off the air at MSNBC, but sadly, Fox is still willing to have this racist flame thrower on as a guest, along with PBS's The McLaughlin Group, which still features Buchanan on most weekends. Host Greta Van Susteren brought on Buchanan this Wednesday evening for some of their typical fearmongering over whether the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire and for Buchanan to do the usual flame throwing he's known for, trying to paint the President as some sort of radical who pals around with terrorists.

Sadly for Buchanan, we all know how well this sort of flame throwing worked out for them during the last election. Buchanan is still lamenting the fact that his wanna' be girlfriend Palin didn't get elected and pretending her brand of radical rhetoric is something that appeals to most middle of the road voters.

The really pathetic thing about this interview and Van Susteren's show is that it actually got worse after she had Buchanan on. She followed this interview up with Donald Trump being allowed to lie in a fact free unchallenged zone, which is the comfort of Fox "News."

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Well, we got rid of this bigot on MSNBC, but he's still out there week after week on PBS with one of their other right wing relics, John McLaughlin, once again showing he's not quite ready for the 21st century with his hopes that we don't have a woman in the Oval Office for another few decades: Pat Buchanan Says, "Let's Hope" U.S. Doesn't Elect A Female President Until "2040 Or 2050," Then Claims He's Joking.

What's really sad relates somewhat to what Eleanor Clift pointed out, which is that politics is such a dirty game these days, you've got a lot of potentially good people who don't want to put up with the negative campaign ads and their name being dragged through the muck whether they're men or women. What did not get mentioned here is the issue of just how much money it takes to get elected and the impediment that is there to prevent anyone of any sex, gender, religion, party, or walk in life from having a chance to serve in elected office if you're not rich already or have the backing of those who are.

It is really pathetic that the United States is lagging behind a good portion of the rest of the world with the number of women in elected office or heaven forbid leading a country. It was sad to hear Buchanan hoping it remained that way for our highest office for decades to come, whether he claimed he's joking or not. I guess he's still bitter his girlfriend Palin didn't have a chance to get in there after she helped blow up John McCain's campaign.

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During his Fox Business special, Bad Speech which reaired on their sister network, Fox News this Saturday, John Stossel highlighted several incidences which he called "assaults on speech," the first of which was the firing of Pat Buchanan from MSNBC.

Apparently both Buchanan and Stossel are terribly upset with Van Jones' organization, Color of Change, for exercising their own free speech in protesting the kind of hatred Pat Buchanan had been peddling for ages now. Here's their petition which Stossel read part of to Buchanan:

Below is the message we'll send to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Steve Capus on your behalf. You can add a personal message using the box on the right.

I'm writing to demand that you fire Pat Buchanan immediately. Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere. He recently went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."

Pat Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC and NBC want to be seen as trusted, mainstream sources of news and commentary, you need to fire Buchanan now.

Stossel only read the portion where they said he peddled white supremacist ideology and his response was to say he didn't know what that means. Stossel also read part of the list from this post by Think Progress: Why MSNBC Dumped Pat Buchanan: His 10 Most Outrageous Statements:

3. Claimed Jerry Sandusky’s atrocities are because of “Homosexual marriage.” Buchanan appeared on a right-wing radio show on November 15 to make some convoluted comparisons: “Let’s take this Penn State thing…these horrors, there’s an organization that marches in the gay pride parade in New York called—used to—called the North American Man Boy Love Association, which advocated voluntary sex along the lines of exactly what was going on at Penn State. Many of our political icons have marched in that parade right behind that NAMBLA float […] This is now, homosexual marriage is now the civil rights cause of the decade.”

Buchanan's response was to just start laughing and deny he made the statement. Stossel didn't bother to point out that the link goes to a Media Matters post with the audio of the interview, so people could go listen for themselves and hear what he said.

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Ah yes... if we're going to have a discussion about President Obama and his recent announcement that he's "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage, who better to bring on than someone who's had a long history of anti-LGBT bigotry like Pat Buchanan? That's exactly what we got this Monday when Buchanan appeared on Megyn Kelly's show on Fox News, America Live.

Although I can't say some of the other networks are doing much better since I can't seem to get his fellow bigots Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed or Bishop Harry Jackson, among others, off of my television screen either. It wouldn't bother me so much to have them on if they were actually being challenged on their views, but as Media Matters noted in their post from Sunday, with the exception of Chris Matthews, that generally has not been the case.

Here's now Fox Insider portrayed the interview above: Pat Buchanan: Joe Biden ‘Dragged Barack Obama Out of the Closet’:

Pat Buchanan, who ran against former President George H. W. Bush in 1992 in the GOP primary, joined Megyn Kelly on America Live to talk about possible backlash the president could face.

Buchanan disagrees that President Obama’s public support will help him, saying, “I think that Joe Biden basically dragged Barack Obama out of the closet.” He continued, “I think the president has put his presidency at risk because this is an emotional, cultural, moral issue. And when folks go to the polls the overwhelmingly majority already in 30 states have imposed a ban on homosexual marriage.”

Megyn Kelly recalled Fox News contributor Sally Kohn saying that the vote in North Carolina to ban gay marriage shouldn’t be taken as an indicator of anything because the number of people who turned up to vote was very small. Buchanan responded, “How does that guest of yours explain how it was for example in California in 2008 where Barack Obama was winning in one of the largest margins in history. 52 percent of Californians voted to ban gay marriage, a majority of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans.” [...]

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As if the interview with former CIA torture architect Jose Rodriguez on 60 Minutes wasn't bad enough, Sean Hannity followed up the next day with an even more infuriating interview of Rodriguez as well. If you were disgusted by Leslie Stahl lobbing friendly softballs to this war criminal, it's probably not going to do your blood pressure any good to watch the Hannity job he received the next evening on Fox.

Hannity brought on Pat Buchanan this Wednesday evening and was continuing to parrot Rodriguez's talking points that without torture, President Obama would not have had the intelligence needed to send in the SEAL team after bin Laden.

As Media Matters has been documenting, carrying water for Bush and Cheney's torture program is nothing new for Fox or the right-wing media. You can read more about that from last year here: Right-Wing Media Still Hyping EITs, Ignoring Experts' Dispute, and here: Right-Wing Media Tout Bin Laden Death As Victory For Torture, Ignore Dispute.

And here is their latest report debunking Hannity's talking points in the clip above: One Book Defending Waterboarding Doesn't Change The Fact That Torture Doesn't Work:

In a book published Monday, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service during the Bush administration, defends the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) such as waterboarding, a technique that groups such as Amnesty International have called "torture." Rodriguez claimed that EITs "led to the capture and killing of Usama bin Ladin." However, multiple experts, including a CIA interrogator, an FBI counterintelligence expert, a former CIA inspector general, and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, have said that these techniques were not effective or did not lead to the strike against bin Laden. [...]

One can hear the same argument Rodriguez is making on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, which have touted bin Laden's death as a victory for EITs and President Bush. But it's an argument rebutted by many experts, who dispute whether the use of EITs yielded critical intelligence that led to bin Laden.

And you can read those rebuttals in the rest of their post. I'm still waiting for Hannity to take up that offer Keith Olbermann made for him to be waterboarded back in 2009 if he still doesn't think it's torture. Transcript of Hannity and Buchanan below the fold.

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This weekend on PBS's The McLaughlin Group, we were treated to host John McLaughlin hoping for the return to the days of special prosecutor Ken Starr investigating another sex scandal. McLaughlin asked his panel what the probability that another special prosecutor would be assigned to investigate the recent sex scandal with members of the Secret Service hiring prostitutes and was met with a resounding "No!" by every one of his guests.

Pat Buchanan, who is still a weekly regular on this show on PBS despite his firing from MSNBC, told McLaughlin that there's no need for a special prosecutor unless the government is failing to do their job and investigate the matter themselves, which is not the case here. And Mort Zuckerman, who they had placed on the wrong side of the aisle as usual with Eleanor Clift, responded that "one Ken Starr was enough" in his lifetime.

That did not deter McLaughlin from proclaiming that there was an 80 percent chance that one would be assigned.

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Pot, meet kettle. If there is anyone out there who ought to know something about "divisive" rhetoric and pitting average Americans against each other for political gain, it's these two. Pat Buchanan, after finally being knocked off the air at MSNBC, retreated again to Fox and Sean Hannity's show to throw stones at President Obama for daring to speak out about the extremely destructive Ryan budget and for commenting on the upcoming ruling on the Affordable Care Act by the Supreme Court.

HANNITY: Patrick J. Buchanan, you've heard a lot of hyperbole, demagoguery even in your lifetime. What do you think?

BUCHANAN: Sean, I think you're correct. This is divisive and it's demagogic. And it's also foolish. We're seven months away from the presidential election and Barack Obama is crippling the most vital asset he has, which is the presidency of the United States and the aura that surrounds it and the fact that the American people give deference to a president. He's coming down from that pedestal and making himself a pretty savage partisan. In so doing, he is also damaging his reputation, which seems to be deserved that he's a very likable individual.

He is polarizing and dividing the country and quite frankly, he is not credible to portray Mitt Romney as some kind of Social Darwinist, who's going to order the Pinkertons to shoot down the strikers in the streets. So I think his own people, quite frankly are probably going to pull him back from this kind of rhetoric, because it's the end of campaign rhetoric of somebody who's losing. Like you said, if you've got a great record to run on, run on it. You don't go out and try to demonize your opponent.

And it just got worse from there with the name calling. As Jon Perr noted here -- After Threatening Judges, GOP Accuses Obama of Judicial Intimidation -- George W. Bush routinely criticized the Supreme Court, but that seems to have gone down the memory hole with these two:

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Well, we managed to get Pat Buchanan off the air on MSNBC, but that didn't stop him from rearing his ugly head on PBS over the weekend to sing the praises of one Charles Murray, along with host John McLaughlin and The National Review's Rich Lowry.

John McLaughlin opened the second segment of the show bemoaning the decline of marriage in the United States along with the number of children who are born out of wedlock.

For a little refresher on just who Charles Murray is, I'll just refer back to David Brooks singing his praises earlier this month on Charlie Rose's show which I posted here -- David Brooks: The Villagers' Mr. 'Common Sense Center'.

As was linked and quoted in that post, Charles Pierce took apart Brooks' op-ed preceding that interview in his article here -- Our Mr. Brooks Finds Another Very Important Thinker. Rich Lowry in the clip above failed to mention the entire title of Murray's book just as Brooks did, which is as Pierce noted Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Somehow that whole "state of white America" portion of the title didn't seem to be very relevant to either of them. Imagine that?

As Media Matters documented before Buchanan finally got the boot from MSNBC, and as Buchanan mentioned in the clip above, Buchanan cited Murray's work in his recent book -- Pat Buchanan Won't Disavow Idea That Minorities Have Inferior Genes:

In his new book Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan cites The Atlantic article and the work of Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve with Herrnstein. The Bell Curve argues that there's racial differences in intelligence. Buchanan wrote in his book.

It seems trying to mainstream Murray's ideas are nothing new for our corporate media or for The McLaughlin Group in particular. From FAIR back in Feb. 1995 -- Racism Resurgent - How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race:

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