Out of the past, via Jim Newell:
MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews asks of World Bank/IMF protests in Washington DC: “Those people out in the streets, do they hate America?” Conservative pundit Cliff May responds: “Yes, I’m afraid a lot of them do. They hate America. They align themselves with Saddam Hussein. They align themselves with terrorists all over the world.” Hardball correspondent David Shuster later adds that “anti-Americanism is in the air.”
One of these days I’ll go the full Somerby on Iraq and do 1000 word posts where I repeat myself and call you “rubes”. Until then…
cathyx
If you’re not with the 1%, you’re unamerican.
Steeplejack
God, I just . . . Grr. Gonna start drinking early tonight.
FlipYrWhig
Try to believe it, dear readers! Our analysts emitted low, mordant chuckles.
Jay B.
The thrust of the story Wonkette referenced was that Matthews claimed that if cable news had been around back in aught-two they would have been more skeptical of WMD claims.
Seriously.
We are a failed state. That we are not actually burning things is a testament to entropy.
Mnemosyne
I was trying to remember the other day which blogger’s schtick was “Hey, rube!” and now I remember it was Somerby. I haven’t read him in a very long time (at least 2006, IIRC).
arguingwithsignposts
You know, i sense a Jeremiah Wright moment coming on.
mai naem
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said he’s stepping down at the end of the month. Kind of disappointed. I think he’s one of the good guys. I wonder if the Obama people are going to appoint him to something or if he’s going to go work in the private sector to make some $$$. Or if he’s going to run for an office as a Repub.
DonkeyKong
As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring. -DougJ
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@FlipYrWhig:
Did you paste that in from DH?
jl
Re the linked Wonkette story:
I would be satisfied if some of the not completely hopeless, but often very bad, cable news talking heads would get a few more tingles up their brains.
Whether their legs tingle or not is their business, and while I wish they would keep that to themselves, if they want to share, it is a relatively minor issue.
TBogg
Why would anyone have Cliff May on, much less ask his opinion on anything?
Todd
The reference to Cliff May cracks me up.
What a buffoon that clown is.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Everyone knows Mathews is a flake, and drama queen at times, with seemingly pure wingnuty things that fly out of his mouth now and then.
On the whole, and even with some slathering of Bush with air craft carrier thing, I don’t put Tweety in the worstest category for cable news pundits. He is capable of, and actually does take the progressive tone on many issues. He comes from a wingnut family though, and imo, is one of those conflicted about that leading to spasms of wingnuttery. But if you go back and watch all the segments he did on the Iraq invasion, he was one of the few who even questioned what was happening, and did so often, usually at the end of his program. The rest of cable news fell in line, and stayed in line. He is not the worst of the worst by a long shot, imo.
Omnes Omnibus
@TBogg: Is that some kind of evil koan?
JPL
Chris May keeps things interesting. It’s the sole purpose of the news.
FlipYrWhig
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: It’s from memory, alas. You know he allows comments now. He doesn’t read them, though. And he’s on an ever more intense anti-MSNBC jihad.
FlipYrWhig
@TBogg: For a while I thought he must be a legacy, the grandson of Curtis LeMay or something.
Maude
@TBogg:
They couldn’t get McCain.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: That’s unpossible.
Heliopause
Chris Matthews is on the same side as Balloon Juice. Maybe you didn’t notice but he went absolutely apeshit on Cory Booker this week, calling him a traitor amongst other things.
MikeBoyScout
Not only do these pricks have all the money, they’ve obviously access to all the cutting edge drugs.
You know who else is aligned with Saddam Hussein? Saint RONALDUS MAGNUS!
Bago
“Yes, I’m afraid a lot of them do. They hate Iraq. They align themselves with the occupiers of Abu Grahib. They align themselves with air strikes all over the world.”
slag
@arguingwithsignposts:
You mean like the time Matthews went on about how Jeremiah Wright is Obama’s “Iraq”? No. I will never ever let that one go. What a bizarre mind that is!
I really do think the Iraq war altogether disproves the “liberal media” theory. If these people had started from a place wherein war is an absolute last resort only to be entered into under extreme and compelling circumstance (you know, the “liberal” place), they would have been much less credulous about the Iraq adventure than they actually were. You don’t have to be an uber genius to have recognized what a gratuitous mistake that war was going to be. You just have to be deeply circumspect about war, in general. Which they obviously were not.
gbear
How could anyone who was young in the 60’s say anything so fucking stupid?
Linnaeus
@Jay B.:
Yep. Our version of Diocletian may be able to hold things together, but barring some fundamental changes, we’re in trouble.
chopper
i was a part of that demo in DC, and as somebody on the ground whose word you can take to the bank i gotta say we were all america-hating communists who loved hitler. commie nazis, all of us.
Linnaeus
@gbear:
Not everyone who was young in the 1960s had a positive feeling about liberal protest movements. Sure, you had Students for a Democratic Society, but you also had Young Americans for Freedom.
Steeplejack
@gbear:
Exactly.
Bruce S
The Wisdom of General Stuck: “if you go back and watch all the segments he did on the Iraq invasion, he was one of the few who even questioned what was happening, and did so often, usually at the end of his program”
Media Matters: Matthews fawned over Bush: “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. … He looks for real. … [H]e didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does. … We’re proud of our 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.”
On the January 31, 2005, edition of Hardball, while praising that month’s Iraqi election, Matthews falsely claimed that no insurgent attacks had occurred at polling places on Election Day. In fact, attacks on Iraqi polling places were widely reported during the January 30 elections.
Before Bush had even delivered his November 30, 2005, speech at the U.S. Naval Academy laying out a “Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” Matthews used variations of the word “brilliant” twice to describe it, while deriding Democratic critics of the Iraq war as “carpers and complainers.” Media Matters noted at that time that Matthews’s over-the-top praise for Bush included his claim that “[e]verybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs” and his statement that Bush sometimes “glimmers” with “sunny nobility.”
On the December 16, 2005, edition of Hardball, Matthews stated, “If [Bush’s] gamble that he can create a democracy in the middle of the Arab world” is successful, “he belongs on Mount Rushmore.”
On the July 31 edition of Hardball, Matthews stated that if Democratic critics recognize that Bush made a “smart decision” to invade Iraq, then Bush “deserves to have a place in history” because “[y]ou can’t say he did the right thing but he didn’t quite do it right.”
Both Sides Do It
Why is Jim Newell stuck prancing around Gawker and Wonkette, while Ross Douthat and Joel Achenbach and Anne Applebaum and Chris Cillizza and Michael Gerson and David Ignatius and Colbert King and Charles Lane and Ruth Marcus and Dana Milbank and Matt Miller and Kathleen Parker and Steven Pearlstein and Jennifer Rubin and David Brooks and Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins and Howard Fineman and Jonathan Alter and Joe Klein and Joel Stein have national print columns?
Imma get Newell and Doghouse Riley and a pickup truck and six dozen cases of whiskey and we’re gonna burn around the country just slapping all these people in the face. Because what the fuck else can you do.
sherparick
@Both Sides Do It: Don’t forget why does David Brooks, Robert Samuelson, Matt Miller, Sebastian Mallaby, Andrew Sullivan,Casey Mulligan, and others of like ilk get to pontificate on economic and budget issues, usually ending with a call for the “reform” (e.g. “destruction”) of Social Security, all get national print columns, while Dean Baker, David Kay Johnson, Yves Smith, and William Black are exiled to the Intertubes.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Bruce S:
Still can’t read, or comprehend what you read, eh? I clearly said Mathews is a flake and says wingnutty things now and then. I was a daily viewer of Mathews during the runnup and after the Iraq invasion, and yes he said a lot of dumb wingnutty things fawning over Bush and his administration, but he also questioned what was going on, and whether it was a good idea. Few others even did that in cable news.
All your dumbass comment does is confirm what I said about Mathews. Do you want a squirrel with you nut?
edit – so now you going to tell us we need more Tea Party to admire on the left? I’m surprised you even came back to comment on this blog, after that FUBAR statement.
liberal
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
I haven’t kept track of that issue, but I thought it was common knowledge that Tweety was one of the few pundits who was actually against the invasion, his fellating of Bush notwithstanding. Could be wrong, though.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@liberal:
You are correct. And if folks don’t believe me, maybe they will believe Joan Walsh, in her Feb. 2003 interview with Mathews for Salon.
Read the entire interview. And this does not take away from stupid fawning remarks Tweety is prone to, at times. On all sorts of things that are spazzy slathering of right wingers. But the dude at core is a liberal, and anti war.
Deb T
Bob Somerby – I’m glad he’s there to remind everyone how Gore was abused and misused and relate it to what’s happening today. But I can only read so much of him. I’m glad he’s around but his road is way too negative for me. Maybe it says more about my unwillingness to see clearly and my weakness for just a spot of optimism than it says about Somerby.
BTW, I love your phrase “the full Somerby”. I’d steal it but it’s not a reference anyone I know would get.