Local Scribe Gets Some National Attention

And it's NOT about Pittgirl!

Got this from Chris Potter's slag heap:

Go get 'em, Samantha Bennett!

Courtesy of Media Matters, we learn that Bennett -- who contributes a regular column to the Post-Gazette -- is taking on Pat Buchanan over this column.

In that now-notorious piece, Buchanan expressed concern that if the Senate confirms Elena Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court, the court will be packed with Jews and Papists:

If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.

Finally -- somebody willing to speak out about the shameful exclusion of Protestants from public life. It's the last acceptable prejudice, I tell you!

From the Mediamatters piece, we see Sam going into greater detail:

"On the right, there is a certain pressure to out-outrage everyone else," Bennett said. "More moderate conservative opinion doesn't seem to be much of a draw."

And:

She said his column was indicative of the way some conservatives have tilted in order to get attention: "Who is the most popular and who is the draw? It is the people on the fringe."

"The pundits who cater to that get crazy sort of attention," Bennett added. "It has been the theater of outrage. This has been our public discourse. It is who is shouting the loudest."

Back to Potter:

Buchanan, Bennett suggests, is trying to cling to the spotlight in "the theater of outrage. This has been our public discourse. It is who is shouting the loudest." Strupp adds such right-wing blather may be "hurting columnists as a whole," since as Bennett says, "[I]t can put more pressure on the rest of us to be more out there."

Actually, I wish that were more true. If you look at the Post-Gazette roster of columnists, for example, nobody comes anywhere CLOSE to being as bonkers as Jack Kelly, the Burghosphere's bete noir.

That's too bad, in my book. But these days, an ultra-left perspective is about as hard to find on a newspaper editorial page as it is on the Supreme Court.

In fact, THAT may be the last acceptable prejudice.

Mega Congrats to Sam. Now that she's referenced favorably at Mediamatters, she should be getting a check from George Soros any day now.

UPDATE: Sam gave me an exclusive quote (eat that, Chris Potter!!):

If you think the makeup of the SCOTUS should reflect that of the American public (and that's certainly not in the Constitution), there are imbalances far more glaring: Assuming Kagan is confirmed, there are no Protestants on the Court, and women are still not represented proportionally to their presence in the population.

Exclusive.