Hey, has anybody ever noticed thatChris Matthews is a moron?

The TV in my office is an old 13″ portable and the only cable news channel I can get is MSNBC. So I’m sitting here working on an article for the American Spectator (subscribe now) and the TV’s on MSNBC, where they’re doing the preview for President Obama’s health-care press conference.

The panel is Howard Fineman of Newsweek, Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews. First of all, one notices in their discussion is an absolute absence of balance or objectivity. The fundamental premises, unspoken but clearly shared by all the participants, is that health care “reform” is necessary, that something must be done, that what the president has proposed is generally the kind of “reform” needed, and that therefore the only thing to be debated is, “How can the president get Congress to agree to his proposal?”

In other words, it is an entirely false debate. And, just before they went to a commercial break, Matthews said something extraordinarily stupid, even for him:

Something must be done about health care, he said, “or this society’s not going to hold together.”

Eh?

Of course, we all remember the tragic HMO riots of 1999, the deadly terrorist attacks by the pharmaceutical lobby, the ongoing carnage in urban America caused by rival gangs of health-insurance lobbyists. The prospect of more such violent turmoil is surely what Matthews had in mind.

Keith Olbermann is an evil maniac, but at least he is not as consistently jaw-dropping stupid as Matthews.

UPDATE: Regarding the press conference, Jim Geraghty has a “Straw Man Bingo” card from the Senate Republicans, and notes some of the routine rhetorical tropes of Obama-ese:

“We inherited these problems”; “the alternative is to do nothing”; “Let me be clear”; “Can’t get distracted by . . .”; and finally, “As you know, I’ve consistently said,” usually used when announcing a change in position.

He left out “I get letters . . .” And for some reason, all of these letters are from people tragically and unjustly suffering because Obama can’t get what Obama wants.

UPDATE II: I’m listening to Obama answering questions in this news conference and thinking, “Take away his Teleprompter, and you take away his magic.” He just did an example of “the red pill and the blue pill,” which are equally effective but of different prices, but which the current health-system does not “incentivize” the thrifty choice.

Right. We all know how federal control incentivizes thrift!

Chris Matthews worries Palin ‘talkinglanguage of far right . . of paranoia’

Via Newsbusters, which has transcript:

Wonder who gave him this idea? Joan Walsh or David Letterman?

Chris Matthews — and Allah? — bash Rush

“The reason the White House goes after Rush, Newt, and Cheney isn’t because they’re out of power, it’s because they’re unpopular, something Matthews knows (or should know) better than anyone given his network’s obsession with trumpeting Limbaugh’s pronouncements as a foil to Obama.”
— Allahpundit

Chris Matthews sucks bad

Turned on the TV in my home office, hoping to watch Michelle Malkin on the Glenn Beck show, but the old portable TV my kids hooked up doesn’t get Fox News.

So I switched over to MSNBC just to try to get an update on the non-Carrie Prejean nude news — just in time for “Hardball” with Chris Matthews.

He completely sucks, doesn’t he? I remember for years how the liberal bloggers were always ranting about the wretched awfulness of “Tweetie” Matthews. I didn’t get it, because I never watched his show. (I’m not a big TV watcher, period.)

I’d occasionally be switching channels, catch small doses of Matthews and not really think about it But . . . OMG!

To try to sit in a room where the TV is tuned to “Hardball” for a full freaking hour! Now I get what the liberal bloggers were complaining about. The man seems congenitally incapable of framing any argument except in the most superficially stereotypical terms.

Chris Matthews is to coherent discourse what Johnny Rotten is to fine jazz — which is to say, he’s never even attempted it. What is so annoying about Matthews is his utter lack of curiosity. He doesn’t ask questions in search of information, and he routinely mischaracterizes the scope of any controversy.

Matthews begins an interview with an antagonist — a guest who represents the “other side” — by expressing the most ludicrously pejorative caricature of the antagonist’s position. So, before the guest can begin to engage, he must first clear away this misleading distortion. Then, predictably, while the guest is attempting to clarify his own position, Matthews interrupts with some sarcastic idiocy.

He’s a much worse TV interviewer than either Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, and I’m not a great admirer of either of those guys. The whole point of having a guest do a TV interview is to hear what the guest has to say, but Matthews is infinitely more interested in hearing his own voice than in letting the audience hear his guests.

At least when Hannity starts the bully-boy routine on a liberal guest — hectoring and interrupting — it’s entertaining in a pro-wrestling sort of way. O’Reilly has his own trademark brand of obnoxiousness, but it is arguably entertaining obnoxious.

What’s the difference? Hannity comes out of a talk-radio background, and O’Reilly has been doing TV all his life. Both of them are professional broadcasters, who have some basic concept that they are on TV to attract and engage an audience.

Matthews, by contrast, is a lifelong Democratic Party hack, who got hired for TV as a “political analyst” and parlayed that (via the DC schmooze circuit) into his anchor role. But because he was hired for his politics, he didn’t have to be any good at the audience-attraction part of the job, and never bothered to learn it.

Before anyone can yell “hypocrite” at me, I am well aware of my own bad rhetorical habits. But I do this in writing. The written word and broadcasting are very different media. You can skim through the written word and turn the page any time you want, so an article you disagree with doesn’t have the intrusive feeling that you get being stuck in a room with Chris Matthews on your TV. (This old 13-inch portable TV doesn’t have a remote.)

With TV, however, you can’t “skim.” There is a temporal linearity to the TV-viewing experience, from which the viewer can only escape by changing the channel. And the ability of Chris Matthews to inspire viewers to change the channel is the most obvious explanation for MSNBC’s persistently low ratings over the years.

It’s not about Matthews’ politics. Ed Schultz comes on right after “Hardball,” and Ed rivals Keith Olbermann for obnoxious liberalism. But Ed is entertaining. He’s a good interviewer who brings on the guest, asks questions, and lets the guest answer.

Matthews has been on MSNBC forever and has never attracted an audience. There is no evidence that he even has the capacity to learn how to be good on TV. If the executives at MSNBC cared anything about building an audience, they’d cancel “Hardball” immediately and negotiate a buyout of Matthews’ contract.

Somewhere out there in America is a good TV newsman — liberal in his politics, but skilled at his craft — who is being deprived of a career opportunity because the stupid suits at MSNBC can’t see what anyone with two eyes and a brain can see: Chris Matthews sucks beyond hope of redemption, and he’s clogging up a perfectly good hour of cable TV time.

UPDATE: A mystery has been cleared up.

Chris Matthews: ‘Oh, God’

Dissing Bobby Jindal:

I didn’t like Jindal’s speech, either, but then again, nobody’s paying me a million a year to do TV news, either. And I didn’t diss his speech before he ever opened his mouth.

UPDATE: Michael Calderone of the Politico says it sounded like Keith Olbermann, not Matthews, who said “Oh, God.”

‘If she can read, if she can write . . .’

“. . . she’s gonna make some money,” says Chris Matthews, talking about Sarah Palin’s rumored book deal and stirring ire at Conservatives for Palin. The tingly-legged twerp, whose idiotic chatter during MSNBC’s inauguration coverage prompted even liberals to complain, has about as much right to question Palin’s erudition as Glenn Greenwald has to accuse others of “abject ignorance.”

UPDATE: Moe Lane:

. . . and in the final analysis I don’t see where there’s much difference whether the talking head is malicious, or whether it is simply a fool.

Split the difference: He’s a malicious fool.

UPDATE II: I hadn’t noticed this until Stop the ACLU pointed it out:

Matthews repeated his suggestion that Palin could not write the book later in the show. “The question is who actually will write the Palin book,” he said. “The only politician I know who can write is Barack Obama.”

Perhaps it is time that Authors Against Obama issues its first official press release . . .

Heh.

Swiped from FishbowlDC.

UPDATE: Jack Shafer writes about Matthews’s annoying chatterbox routine during MSNBC’s inauguration coverage, and quotes this stupid anecdote as a typical example:

You know, Keith, this country is not as monarchical as it sometimes seems to the outsiders. I was at the shoe store the other day to get my shoes fixed, and sitting next to me — standing next to me at the cobbler was Jane Roberts, the wife of the Supreme Court justice. I was at a Georgetown game the other day, watching them beat Providence, and sitting next to me is the chief justice. I keep saying to myself, That’s the chief justice of the United States sitting there next to me. He’s a sports fan. There is some measure of democracy that comes to mind here.

OK, and your point would be . . .? I mean, if you hang around D.C. enough, you’re going to bump into famous people from time to time. But does the fact that Justice Roberts likes basketball and Jane Roberts sometimes needs to get a broken heel repaired really illustrate “some measure of democracy,” as Matthews suggests? Or is he just bumping his gums and filling the airwaves with random idiocy?

Somewhere, there is a retired NBC executive — the guy who originally hired Matthews — who cringes every time he flips over and sees Matthews chattering away like a meth-addicted chimpanzee. And you know that former NBC executive says to himself: “What have I done? My God, what I have I done?”

Matthews: ‘A Bridge Too Far’

A liberal reaches his limit:

Matthews is a bridge too far. I could never vote for, raise funds for or in any other way help Chris Matthews become a member of the Senate and if it came down to it, if I lived in Pa, I’d probably support Specter. If we thought Lieberman was perfidious and unreliable, we haven’t seen anything yet. Matthews is very nearly nuts as far as I can tell.

He’s no more nuts than Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi, but that is damning him with faint praise.

Quote of the Day

“I’ll tell ya, you know, liberals out there cannot stand her. Regular populist liberals cannot stand her. A lot of the middle of the road people can’t stand her. But as long as you got an audience, look at that crowd! . . . This is really hard to do this, to salute Sarah Palin.”
— Chris Matthews

UPDATE: A liberal responds:

The sense of entitlement that this blowhard personifies is truly stunning. He’s spent his entire life as a principle-free political gossip in Washington – a human embodiment of all that is sick and wrong with Beltway culture. And yet, he really thinks he can just parachute into one of the largest states in the country, buy a mansion in Philadelphia and be a senator on sheer celebrity alone.

Hmmm. Wonder where Matthews got that idea?

Incredible. Just … incredible.

Fairly unbalanced:

“He’s been a good father, a good citizen, he’s paid attention to his country,” Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host, said Wednesday night in addressing those who might be leaning against Mr. Obama based on race. “Give the guy a break and think about voting for him.”

That’s setting the bar kind of low, isn’t it? I mean, has John McCain been a bad father, a bad citizen, ignored his country? As Pete says, these guys are so far into the tank they need scuba gear.