Mark Leibovich has a long piece in this weekend’s New York Times profiling Chris Matthews, bloviator extraordinaire and Holy Cross grad. This last fact is especially relevant because I tend to have a slightly irrational affection for prominent Holy Cross grad. ((For those unaware, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA is my alma mater.)) Chris Matthews is no exception. Despite the attacks on him from various liberal sources including Media Matters and despite the fact that a number of liberal thinkers I admire point to Chris Matthews as exemplifying what is worst and most destructive in today’s media, I still like the guy. Of course – I don’t quite buy the premise – let’s call it the Glenn Greenwald premise – the blames the media more than any other source for our dysfunctional politics. I’ll be writing more about that as time goes on.
I’m a big fan of Mr. Greenwald – and even as I agree with most of the individual points he makes, and with his overall view of the larger political dysfunction, I disagree with the central thesis – of his blog and apparently his new book. I plan on reading his book in the next few weeks and posting my thoughts.
But for the moment, let’s appreciate one of the more entertaining characters in cable news, Chris Matthews, with a few excerpts from the Times piece:
There is a level of solipsism about Matthews that is oddly endearing in its self-conscious extreme, even by the standards of television vanity…
Sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews will boast to Olbermann of having restrained himself during the prior segment. “And I reward him with a grape,” Olbermann says…
“I remember we were out hitchhiking once,” O’Regan told me. Matthews started arguing about Nixon and Vietnam. “It was just like watching his show today. Chris would ask a question, then he would answer it himself and then the person was invited to comment on Chris’s answer to his own question…”
By contrast, Matthews has called Obama “bigger than Kennedy” and compared the success of his campaign to “the New Testament.” His reviews of Obama’s speeches have been comically effusive at times, as when he described “this thrill going up my leg” after an Obama victory speech. (“Steady,” Olbermann cautioned him on the air.)
11 replies on “Chris Matthews: Entertaining Bloviation”
I think the news media has diffently ran this race, and once again insuring that the Republicans win the White House. The reailty is that all Reagan democrates like myself will vote for John Macain. I am a well educated white women from WV. We are the people you all say is the most uneducated in the country, please facts straight. We have the lowest dropout rate in the country, and per captia the Ivy League students in college. Please stop giving the Republicans the White House. Barrack is not qualified to be president now or in the near future. So please why don’t you just come on and say the next president of tje US is John Mcain!!!!!!!
Byron De La Beckwith (Fertilizer salesman): killed Medgar Evers, black man
Robert Chambliss (Truck Driver) responsible for the Birmingham Church bombing that killed 4 young black girls
Roy Bryant (Grocery Store Owner): killed Emmett Till young black boy
Edgar Ray Klien(Saw mill operator): Responsible for the death of James Chaney, young black college student
All these people were hard working white people with no college degrees
Makes you wonder why white working people with no college degrees won’t vote for Obama
FACT: 92 % OF BLACKS IN CAROLINA VOTED FOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA..
WERE ALL THESE HARD WORKING BLACK PEOPLE WITH NO COLLEGE DEGREES?
MAKES YOU WONDER WHY BLACK WORKING PEOPLE , MOST WITHOUT COLLEGE DEGREES, REFUSED TO VOTE FOR A WHITE CANDIDATES.
THE DOOR SWINGS BOTH WAYS OR IS RACISM ONLY RESTRICTED TO WHITES?
FACT: Most blacks supported Hillary Clinton initially despite the fact that Obama was in the race.
In other words – your statement is misleading – black people didn’t refuse to vote for the white candidate – whom most of them supported initially – but instead changed their preference from Hillary to Obama at some point, along with other key Obama demographics like young people and people with college degrees and advanced degrees, and voted for Obama in large numbers.
Chris, I was watching Hardball tonight and found the lovefest about Catholic education of the fifities misleading. I went to Catholic school and was taught by nuns and priests in the late fifties on Long Island. When you graduated from parochial school you were not only all the “good” things mentioned by Pat Buchanan and Mike Magonigle, you were also anti-Semitic and Racist as were the nuns and priests and our parents. My experience throughout the years has been that Catholics are particularly good at white-washing their past behavior. Enough of the misrepresentation of Catholic religious indocrtination as education. They are not the same thing ,and there is no necessary relationship, nothwithstanding Tim Russert, between Catholic education and the formation of good character. The facts of history argue otherwise. You might do a show on the seeming conundrum between Catholic moral education of the fifties and anti-Semitism and racism. It might prove enlightening. As per your comments about the Irish and policemenship, I also grew up in a predominatly Irish Catholic community. I can think of six of the school bullies and outright drug users and petty criminals who joined the Suffolk County Police force. The joke in my community was that the police force was the reform school for the Irish guys.
[…] Holy Cross – a fact which by itself causes me to be irrationally positive about individuals, from Chris Matthews to Bob Cousy to Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau. He also went to Fordham Law – which is one of the […]
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