“…which I suppose would include myself.”

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Alright, I’m sure you’ve seen some version of the below video where Chris Matthews asks sausage-brain to explain what appeasement means and protruding-forehead does his best imitation of Lenny from Mice and Men, “The rabbits, George. I want to pet the rabbits.”

But I’d like you to skip past “screaming-dude-who’s-greatest-college-experience-included-a-beer-bong-and-a-copy-of-Juggs” (I know its hard) in favor of a later moment… starting at 4:07 and going to the end… where Chris Matthews bemoans the denotative meaning of phrases like “appeaser” and “cut-and-run” and “WMD” and “patriotism”.

The quote from Matthews:

The whole mindset of the last several years… since 2000… has been to shut up critics. If you don’t like a war policy you get branded with a name. You’re unpatriotic. You’re a cut-and-runner. You’re an appeaser. You can’t argue politics in America. You can’t question power, because if you question it you’re going tobet drummed out of acceptable society. You’re going to called an appeaser. These magic words are used for one purpose… to shut you up… so they can continue with a policy.”

And then later:

Arguing over policy… arguing over our place in the world shouldn’t be seen as unpatriotic. In most cases it should be the essence of patriotism… We didn’t have (a real debate) when we went to war in Iraq. To some its the media’s fault. To some its just that people are intimidated to challenge this President.

And if you keep going:

The shutting up of opposition is critical to running a country in an undemocratic way. Let’s put it that way.

See, I watch the above and suddenly I’m that cartoon character who does a triple-take… eyes and lips in several places at once due to my face moving so fast… because while I applaud every word Chris Matthews is saying, please, correct me… HE IS NOT A NEW PUNDI, IS HE?

Hardball was on the air in 2001 and 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and earlier this year and during that Mr. Matthews sat across the desk from an endless picnic-line of pundits who did JUST EXACTLY WHAT HE IS NOW DECRYING.

And Chris Matthews… said exactly FUCK-ALL-OF-NOTHING.

At one point in the above video, Matthews shakes his head and explains how he “hates” the phrase “WMD” because it links a myriad of different weapons under one banner of fear.

But you wanna bet I could go through the transcripts in early 2002 and find Andrea Mitchell or Judith Miller or Christopher Hitchens or any number of a thousand people spouting about those very same WMD while Chris Mathews does little more than nod and look concerned?

I suppose the new rule-of-thumb should be that if you’re standing in the line of political thought and you find yourself BEHIND Chris Matthews… you can be pretty sure there will be no concert tickets left.

Look, I’m not a grudge holder and I’m tempted to say nothing and enjoy the conversion of the talking heads who see the crumble and decay of the Republican Party agenda and scramble to be on the side of “right”, but a vindictive part of me can’t do so without wanting to pound my fists on the table and scream.

To some its the media’s fault.

YOU, you huge-headed-prattling-cheedar-face, ARE the media and the missing words you are looking for are, “…which I suppose would include myself”.

To some its the media’s fault… which I suppose would include myself.

At that point… I suppose we’re all good.

56 comments

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  1. …I try and do something beyond just fart jokes.

  2. See, I watch the above and suddenly I’m the cartoon character who does a triple take… his eyes and his lips in several places at once due to the fact that his face is moving so fast.

    Need we any more evidence that its finally time for the people to lead and the pundits to follow?

  3. Matthews, circa May ’03.  Punditry, flopping on the deck like a tuna on a Japanese trawler.

    We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who’s president. Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple. We’re not like the Brits.

    link.

  4. he reeks of it..

    and yet he just cant stop himself from kissing every ass he sees.  a sad, sad man, whom i cant forgive because he just.wont.stop….

    worst part…my mom loves him, so im stuck watching him from time to time.  as ive said before, her eggplant parm is THAT good…

    • WSComn on May 18, 2008 at 18:42

    That we are actually addicted to these sonic-blathering-wastes-of-time?

    I used to listen to them.  At one point I used to believe them.  After all…they’re on TV!!  It must be real!  It has to be the truth!!!

    Now, except for about 50% of KO, I just feel I’m wasting some valuable life watching this pundit parade proclaim superiority over the ‘argument’.  But it’s not a sudden realization.  It creeps up on me…I experience a ‘brain-cloud’, and then I lunge for the remote.  

    Ahh, The Simpsons!

  5. and while he was blathering I kept thinking “Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Chris Matthews??”

    Thank you for posting this — since no one else had mentioned it, I was starting to think maybe it was my imagination, desperately yearning for one of these guys to spit up something that makes sense.    

    • geomoo on May 19, 2008 at 00:06

    His roboguest is not that big a celeb, so he got the dressing down that so, so many lying criminals have richly deserved.  And the Republicans look weaker now.  And the reign of terror of Bush may be ending.  And Congress seems to be standing up.  And it turns out, THE LEFT IS HAVING A HUGE IMPACT ON NATIONAL POLITICS.  Where’s the butter?  Oh, on this side.  Well, since I feel strongly both ways, I’ll make a pretty speech from this side of my mouth.

    But who wants to look a gift horse in the mouth?

    Thanks for putting it right out there.  And thanks for saying:

    I suppose the new rule-of-thumb should be that if you’re standing in the line of political thought and you find yourself BEHIND Chris Matthews… you can be pretty sure there will be no concert tickets left.

    Now that’s funny. But I still take you seriously.

  6. I’ve seen several of the pundits who’ve been ignoring their wingnut guests lies over the last 7 years changing their tune of late.  That includes Tweety and Timmeh.  

    I’ve been wondering if they’ve had a change of heart, or more probable–if they’ve seen that most of their viewers and potential viewers have had a belly full of bush & aren’t buying or willing to tolerate the lies or liars any more.  Plus, they won’t be invited to eat the cocktail weenies of the newly powerful if they keep dissing them.

  7. Here he is on an especially bad day.

    • Mu on May 19, 2008 at 04:40

    Well, I salute Matthews for several points he made (it’s about time).  One of them, right at the end, was about that “Homeland Security” buzzpiffle.

    I wrote about that OVER 2 YEARS AGO over at orange.  But what did I know, I was just a stupid blogger . . . two years ahead of Esteemed Journalist Chris Matthews.

    Mu. . .

  8. I kinda wanted to get back to a lab schedule and work on this free energy thing but there are so many obstacles and so little time.  It is after all a sea of WMD, words of mass diversion, words of mass division, words of mass deception.  How in fact is one to know what is real and what is not.  Media is a for profit entity and as such they need to point their marketing approach to the mental age of thirteen.

    http://www.projectcamelot.org/

    Yeah maybe off topic, maybe even tin foil hattery but conceptually a bit more explanatory than the framed “debating” skills of Chris Matthews.

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