MSNBC Hardball Host Chris Matthews dealt with President George Bush’s charge that Senator Barack Obama would appease terrorists on his show and obliterated Los Angeles conservative radio talk show host Kevin James who was on the show to give the Barack-is-an-appeaser side of it.
James’ problem: he had no idea what actual appeasement is. Note how he tries to get around the issue by talking loud and changing the subject. The problem: even though he takes a lot of heat from some partisans (particularly Democratic progressives), Chris Matthews was an excellent reporter and op-ed column writer (he had an excellent record for political prognostication) before he got on the air.
It’s a classic case of radio talk show host polemics and volume versus a reporter who’s trying to get a substantive answer from an interview subject and insisting that his follow up question be answered. You can see Matthews’ combination of amazement, absolute dismay and seeming contempt for James’ (a) attempts not to answer the question and (b) ignorance about the question he asked him even thought he is “dittoing” President Bush. (Listen closely as Matthews makes his own historical error in a side comment about the Cole…but he’s not the one charging a candidate with something based on inaccuracies).
This is a classic and is Matthews as professional reporter at his best (be sure to cover the eyes and ears of small children):
April 17th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This Guest Voice is by video and web producer Joe Windish, who wrote a well received column earlier this week. He takes another look at the dynamics between politics and cable political and comedy talk shows.
Matthews, Clinton & Colbert: Retributive Jusice In The Modern Mediascape
by Joe Windish
Stephen Colbert ends his Philadelphia run tonight with a guest appearance by Hillary Clinton. There’s nothing saying that appearance will be an interview and it’s too bad, too, after last night’s debate.
The story-line this morning is her relentless pounding of Obama on Rev. Wright and the Weather Underground and the like, as he uses tea and cookies as a means to diffuse such issues rather than attack. He refused even to pile on when given the opportunity with her Bosnia gaffe and (unlike Andrew) I admire him all the more for it.
The bigger debate take away, of course, is her “Yes! Yes! Yes!” belief that Obama could win the presidency.
All of this is the stuff of a great Colbert interview!
A Clinton on the Colbert set the day after a debate that some saycould have been scripted for her by a sycophant press caught up in all of the non-issues of the day is all of the license Colbert needs to go for comedy of epic Correspondents Association Dinner proportions.
I’ll be watching closely tonight.
Colbert’s performance has been fine in Philadelphia, still he’s yet to really soar. Maybe it’s the road, or the size of the theater (nine times that of his NY home), but I have to wonder if he wasn’t thrown off his stride that very first night interviewing Philadelphia native Chris Matthews…
STEPHEN COLBERT: Your show’s called Hardball.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Well I think I have a harder ball than you and let me tell you why.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Hah!!!
STEPHEN COLBERT: Because Barack Obama did an hour with you, how hard could your ball be? He won’t come on my show. I clearly swing a harder ball.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me put you another case… you’ve got Hillary Clinton coming on, right?
STEPHEN COLBERT: Uh… [pregnant pause]… There’s a possibility of that Chris… We like to surprise people with certain guests.
I’m here in the media filing center. The Ohio Democratic Party top dogs have given an overview that I didn’t really hear because I was busy figuring out where I am, uploading photos and saying hello to other press. There is supposedly going to be over 500 press here.
In Ohio, it’s 3:30pm EST. I will be blogging through until about 7:30 or so, when I have to go into the audience - I won a ticket to the debate through a lottery, as well as was awarded credentials. MANY bloggers are here and it’s great. I’ve got some video and will be posting that too.
Here are some photos, after the flip. Have questions about what it’s like and what’s happening here? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try let you know! Read the rest of this entry »
Larry C. Johnson of No Quarter has been arguing for quite some time that Obama is insufficiently vetted to withstand attacks from the right. In a recent piece in The Huffington Post, he discusses the basis of his concerns. And while I don’t agree by any means with all Johnson’s conclusions about Obama’s candidacy or Obama himself, the warnings he has sounded and the red flags he has indicated have most certainly given me pause. In fact, it would be fair to say that Johnson’s writings were some of the first to raise serious doubt in my mind about whether Obama is the best candidate for the times (though I continue to hope he will prove to be the presidential candidate of the future).
But, unlike the attacks on Dukakis, Cleland, and Kerry, the ammunition that Obama has provided to his political foes is significant and deadly. [Huffpost; links in original]
In light of what we know about GOP tactics, Johnson (like me) is bemused by Obamacrats’ willingness to take him at face value and resistance to questioning (or even allowing anyone else to question) his past and past connections.
The e-mails, phone calls - robo and live, invites and blogs are buzzing through every inch of available space, cyber and otherwise, in Ohio right now. In the last two hours alone I’ve received information about Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Jewish community in Northeast Ohio, I was called by a live (as opposed to recorded) Hillary Clinton supporter about attending a rally tomorrow at a local high school and I’m gathering information for a fellow blogger coming into Cincinnati soon, from California, who may drop in on some campaign events.
And there’s still 19 days before Ohio’s primary on March 4.
For those who are curious, the NBC debate - the one that seemed to be in jeopardy because of MSNBC’s David Shuster “pimped out” comment regarding Chelsea Clinton’s activities on behalf of her mother’s campaign - will occur. Tickets are being issued by lottery to Cleveland State University students only, but students, faculty and staff can volunteer. Hardball will be broadcasting all day from an adjacent location with a different sign-up for tickets process, and information on press credentials has yet to be released.
Here are on the ground reports by Ohioans about the campaign events so far:
For a population that was convinced as recently as the first week of January that Ohio wouldn’t make a difference, we are mostly very glad that we didn’t kowtow and change our primary date.
Last week’s Chelsea Clinton furor marks a low point in cable network competition for eyeballs and ears during the 24/7 news cycle and raises broader questions about their prime-time “journalism,” which has degenerated into a babble of idiot ids vying for attention.
David Shuster’s “pimped out” remark exemplifies a trend reported almost a year ago by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that “cable news channels…are moving more toward personalities, often opinionated ones, to win audiences.
“The most strident voices, such as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, are among the biggest successes in winning viewers, as is CNN’s new crusader, Lou Dobbs. How much those individual shows affect a channel’s overall audience is harder to gauge. Their growth in 2006 was substantial, particularly among 25-to-54-year-olds, but those gains were not enough to stanch the overall declines.
“The shifts toward even edgier opinion are also probably a response to another change. Cable is beginning to lose its claim as the primary destination for what was once its main appeal: news on demand. That is something the Internet can now provide more efficiently.”
First the Obama campaign successfully shut down any resistance from the Clintons by succeeding in getting them tagged in the Clinton-loathing media as ‘racist’ or, at least, ‘racist-like‘. (i.e., racist if you ignore the actual meaning of the word ‘racist,’ plus all known facts about Clinton and ignore common sense and the plain meaning of her remark.)
Then Obama’s impassioned supporters jumped into the fray. Look under any Hillary-friendly or Obama-skeptical blog post by a fellow Dem and you’ll find them there in the comments, getting the drift but missing the point and snapping like crocodiles at any question about the appropriateness of making Obama our candidate before we’ve had more time to get to know him or the media, more time to vet him.
Do you wonder, as I do, how people got the idea that this relative newcomer to national politics has the credentials, experience, and other requisites for cleaning up after George W. Bush? Saying so is a sure recipe, as I’ve found, for getting called a fool, a moron, an idiot, amoral, brain-washed, a Hillary shill, a tool of the Clinton establishment, and a tool.
I like Hillary Clinton. Although my heart belongs to John Edwards, I voted for her as the candidate most likely to succeed, and even succeed superbly, at the thankless damn task that cleaning up after George W. Bush is likely to prove. After all, it’s not a
job for someone who can’t deal with being hated. But what a lot of people are saying now is that Hillary is too hated generally to make it to the White House; therefore Dems should get behind Obama.
I say that Obama would be much better off if he let Hillary do the cleaning up before he takes the presidency; it’s going to be a nasty, unpalatable job for the most part involving choices between one decision with consequences that are hard to stomach and another that is even worse. But Obama has signified that he would like to be president now. And many of my friends want him simply because they’re sick of the sound of Clinton-bashing. At least with Obama, mused one, we’d hear new, fresh contumely.
And we all know it’s true: Hillary is hated by many-many-many. In fact, she routinely gets reviled by right, left, and center. At The New York Times, Stanley Fish discusses the loathing that Hillary Clinton evokes from her detractors (not all of whom are Republicans), compared to which, he says, " the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry was a model of objectivity." Fish lists some of the crazier allegations against Hillary. As he says, when the question presented is "“Have the Clintons ever murdered anyone?” — and it turns out to be a rhetorical
question like “Is the Pope Catholic?” — you know that you’ve entered cuckooland."" (NYT)
But I’m more interested in the allegations of Hillary-haters who aren’t actually certifiable. As Fish points out, many of the allegations against her are flat-out contradictory. She is damned by her detractors (who aren’t limited to Republicans) no matter what she does.
See Media Matters’ David Brock’s open letter to NBC News president Steve Capus here.
I ask the question “What the hell’s wrong with Chris Matthews?” here. — I examine his sexism here. — I look at his problem with women here.
But what to do about it? Matthews sort of apologized for some of what he has said about Hillary, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The fact remains that he is an unrepentant chauvinist. Sure, sure, there’s free speech, but that doesn’t mean all speech is thereby immune to criticism. And much of the responsibility rests with NBC, which continues to give him a prominent platform — such as there is anything “prominent” about MSNBC other than Olbermann — from which to hit on and leer at women, discuss his man-crushes, and attack and denigrate strong women. (Hence the recent blogswarm.) Read the rest of this entry »
