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Chris Matthews’ Not Very Post-Racial Moment
Yesterday was Wednesday, and Chris Matthews said something dumb again.
I admit it, I like Chris Matthews, despite his penchant for interview hogging, sexist comments, and — obviously, clueless remarks about race. I’m convinced he means well, but his mouth is permanently set at a faster speed than his brain. I felt a little bad for him last night when he prefaced his clarification with the words “I hope I can say this right.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates widens the frame:
I think it’s most worth noting that “I forgot Obama was black”–in all its iterations–is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it’s really dishonest.
One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we’ve been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We’ve also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you’ll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, “Wow, I forgot you were a woman.” Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.
The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one’s “woman-ness.” So if football and beer don’t fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim “I forgot you were a woman,” as opposed to “I just realized my invented truth was wrong.”
Ditto for Chris Matthews. The “I forgot Obama was black” sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. …
This is why Obama will never be postracial–he can’t make white people face the lie of their ignorance, anymore than Jimmy Baldwin could make black people face the lie of our homophobia. It’s white people’s responsibility to make themselves postracial, not the president’s. …
9 Responses to “Chris Matthews’ Not Very Post-Racial Moment”
I know what you mean Kathy. I sometimes catch myself wondering if Matthews is a closet racist/sexist/good old boy. Other than that though there is an infectious quality to him. I think he means well but his bad issues are more reflexive. He's one of those guys you just know when he blows it, off camera he smacks his hand into his forehead and thinks “doh!” [like Homer Simpson].
He said another really dumb thing yesterday in the pre-game interviews on his show. He looked right at his commenting guests and assured them that the public option wouldn't happen, or that it wouldn't happen through reconciliatoin “because it hadn't already.” That was his logic. In these turbulent times where dems are struggling for ways for the Brown upset to not happen again out of dem frustration and spite over not getting public healthcare option, I think Mr. Matthews could be wrong about that. Unless dems want to take bribe money and commit political suicide, we stand a pretty good chance of reconciliation happening.
We are a generatio at our wits end and Mr. Matthews underestimates that on a regular basis. Other than that I think he's a pretty good viewing. I like his centrist ideas on a lot of issues.
Now if MSNBC could put a muzzle on Maddow's mouth who tries to insert the gay agenda or make subtle references to it every single moment on her show, they'd get me watching her again. They've got a pretty good lineup and they end it with her show?? What that does psychologically is erase any people's loyalties to Olbermann's message as they see him as a lead-in to her act. It's like they're thinking, “yeah, I kinda see where he's coming from..” and then he introduces Maddow as “his good friend Rachel Maddow” and then she launches right into some homosexual pitch. Then 'WHAM' anyone even considering Olbermann's points reverts right back to their old uber-conservative positions.
It's always been my contention that we need to thoroughly understand the origins of homosexuality before we try to ramrod it down the throats of centrists.. They tend to have this inclination to look deeper than the mantras.
When I read things like this, the thing that goes through my mind is always the Passion Play that would resound across the left if this had been said by someone like Beck, Palin, or Limbaugh. Ah, Matthews is a liberal so give him five in the corner.
As always, the liberals have standards so high they are double.
Kathy — the article you quoted is very cool. I love the idea of viewing the comment as a reflection on a false truth Chris Matthews has embedded in his mind. His set of embedded truths is one reason I don't like him most of the time.
@DaMav — Who's giving Matthews “a five in the corner?”
“Who's giving Matthews 'a five in the corner?'”
Harry Reid, probably.
The progressive,liberal Marxists like Matthews and political figures are the most racist people on this planet.In my years of being a Demo,then a Repub-and now an independant,I have seen verbal bones by the left thrown at the poorest people in the poorest neighborhoods.But they have been kept down by the left because without that support base,a progressive couldn't win an election for dogcatcher.What Matthews said isn't even insulting compared to what people with his philosophy say in private.But I am sure they would be excused for wearing verbal hoods too.
Lucky for “Tingles” his ratings are so low … hardly anybody heard him!
You mean he won't even get that? You would think MSDNC would at least make him attend a Diversity Training Seminar, Remedial.
Silhouette,
You start out sympathizing with my thoughts about Chris Matthews and end up bashing Rachel Maddow for her “gay agenda.” The impression I get is that you are the one with the agenda, now Maddow. You bring your hatred and fear of, and ignorance about, gays and lesbians into a thread that had nothing to do with gays and lesbians in what seems to me like your very own homophobic agenda. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Rachel Maddow reporting on news items that concern or involve the rights of people who are homosexual. Homosexual people got news, too. Beyond that, Rachel Maddow, as I'm sure you know, is herself a lesbian woman, and it is entirely natural and normal for her to have a particular interest in important news stories that have some significance about them to gay and lesbian people.
Another thing. By starting out with that sympathetic and agreeable tone attaching to my post about Chris Matthews, about whom we agree, and then seguing into your prejudiced remarks about Rachel Maddow, continuing that same sympathetic, agreeable tone, you effectively include me in your homophobia, as if it was just another aspect of the same topic that we had already agreed on. Perhaps it was unintentional; but even if it is, it's very obvious. Please do not do that again. Please do not use one of my posts about an unrelated subject about which we agree to launch a homophobic tirade against Rachel Maddow, or anyone else. Obviously, if my post is about a gay and lesbian issue, that's different. I mean, not that I particularly want to see or read any of your repellent ideas about gays and lesbians, but when you stick it in to a post of mine that's not about that at all, and then write as though you are assuming my sympathy and including me in your chatty hatefest, that is an imposition on me that I would prefer you refrain from in the future.
I want to say in closing this rather long comment that I don't dislike you as a person and in fact I find it very difficult to reconcile within myself how likable and smart and insightful you can be on other topics — any other topic but this one. It's a disconnect I can't understand and have trouble working out how to deal with it in the context of conversations. That, of course, is my issue not yours. I just want you to know I'm not trying to pick on you or single you out. I just don't like being included, even unintentionally, in someone else's unreasoning biases against an entire group of people based on their sexuality.
That's all.
As usual, the liberals have standards so high they are double.
As usual, the conservatives are unable to make distinctions. If one white person makes a comment about race or skin color that is racist, then the next white person who also makes a comment about race or skin color also must be racist. Context, obvious intent, tone, specific language, none of that matters. If liberals call Glenn Beck racist for saying that Barack Obama hates white people — with no legitimate reason that he can articulate — then liberals must also call Chris Matthews racist for saying he forgot that Barack Obama was black for an hour — despite the obvious reality that Matthews clearly is trying to express the idea that Obama has taken the nation beyond race consciousness but does it in a very clueless way because he is starting from a false assumption; whereas Beck just as clearly intends his comment negatively, as an accusation, as a charge against Obama's integrity and character, in the absence of any rational basis for thinking that way. One standard for all, even when the separate individual items that constitute “all” are utterly different.