General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNever thought I'd say it but I miss Chris Matthew's no BS voice right now. Institutional knowledge
can't be easily replaced. He was obnoxious and dismissive, but was unafraid to speak the truth to power. I miss that.
mzmolly
(51,473 posts)Demonaut
(9,052 posts)phylny
(8,538 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)I get why Matthews had to go, but Ive appreciated his remarks in past on this kind of stuff. Hed definitely be laughing out loud at trumps idiocy lately.
Under The Radar
(3,418 posts)But I do like how all of the other host allow the guest to answer the questions that the host ask of them. Chris drove me nuts with his impatience.
Poor Ari Melber and Joy Reid are working a lot of overtime working weekends and empty slots.
demmiblue
(37,764 posts)PCIntern
(26,700 posts)He was a creep in so many ways.
42bambi
(1,753 posts)the experience to engage in critical constitutional/institutional conversations - with any one of the evening MSNBC hosts.
Bayard
(23,952 posts)Ironic that a month before this all happened, MSNBC was playing a constant parade of people celebrating his--what was it? 30 years on the air?
malaise
(277,091 posts)I do miss Tweety
PCIntern
(26,700 posts)1. Tip ONeill, a fellow landsman, took no shit but worked with the great Ronald Reagan successfully. Wotta guy.
2. Jimmy Carter was a level guy but ineffective
3. Nixon was a crook but brilliant and a closet liberal
4. Although W gave him a tingle up his third leg, he betrayed the country by listening to Cheeeeenee.
5. Repeat the above ad nauseum.
Celerity
(46,154 posts)PCIntern
(26,700 posts)Celerity
(46,154 posts)https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2018/02/12/still-tingling-10th-anniversary-chris-matthewss-thrill-leg
As tough as journalists are on Donald Trump, its hard to believe they ever loved a president as much as Barack Obama. Somehow, its now been a full decade since Chris Matthews announced his famous thrill up the leg. Provoked by Obamas speeches during the 2008 Democratic primaries, the MSNBC host prompted ten years of mockery for the fawning comment.
What isnt known by many is the back story behind the sycophantic remark, the comments little-known prequel and just how irritated Matthews gets when called on the remark. At 10:13pm on February 12, 2008, after Obama won primaries in Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C., the Hardball host reacted this way:
now in the interest of fairness, he was an absolute asshole over Bush, for sure
Mission Accomplished: A look back at the media's fawning coverage of Bush's premature declaration of victory in Iraq
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/mission-accomplished-look-back-medias-fawning-coverage-bushs-premature-declaration
snip
Chief among the cheerleaders was MSNBC's Chris Matthews. On the May 1, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews was joined in his effusive praise of Bush by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter and Democrat Pat Caddell. Former U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) also appeared on the program.:
MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?
[...]
MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?
[...]
MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically [...], the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That [...] if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?
[...]
MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you're the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president's performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan -- what do you think?
COULTER: It's stunning. It's amazing. I think it's huge. I mean, he's landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It's tremendous. It's hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn't matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It's stunning, and it speaks for itself.
MATTHEWS: Pat Caddell, the president's performance tonight on television, his arrival on ship?
CADDELL: Well, first of all, Chris, the -- I think that -- you know, I was -- when I first heard about it, I was kind of annoyed. It sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull. But and then I saw it. And you know, there's a real -- there's a real affection between him and the troops.
[...]
MATTHEWS: The president there -- look at this guy! We're watching him. He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger, but he's flown --
CADDELL: He looks like a fighter pilot.
MATTHEWS: He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him -- I mean, he seems like -- he didn't fight in a war, but he looks like he does.
CADDELL: Yes. It's a -- I don't know. You know, it's an internal thing. I don't know if you can put it into words. [...] You can see it with him and the troops, the ease with which he talks to them. I was amazed by that, frankly, because as I said, I was originally appalled, particularly when I heard he was going in an F-18. But -- on there -- but the -- but you know, that was --
MATTHEWS: Look at this guy!
CADDELL: -- was hard not to be moved by their reaction to him and his reaction to them and --
MATTHEWS: You know, Ann --
CADDELL: -- you know, they -- it's a quality. It's an innate quality. It's a real quality.
MATTHEWS: I know. I think you're right.
Later that day, on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Matthews said:
MATTHEWS: We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's 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. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.
On the May 7, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy what he thought of the response to Bush's landing on the Abraham Lincoln. Looking at the footage, Liddy commented that Bush's flight suit made the best of his manly characteristic. From the May 7 Hardball:
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?
LIDDY: Well, I -- in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know -- and I've worn those because I parachute -- and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those -- run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count -- they're all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.
MATTHEWS: You know, it's funny. I shouldn't talk about ratings. I don't always pay attention to them, but last night was a riot because, at the very time [U.S. Rep.] Henry Waxman [D-CA] was on -- and I do respect him on legislative issues -- he was on blasting away, and these pictures were showing last night, and everybody's tuning in to see these pictures again.
snip
and
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/chris-matthews-was-against-the-iraq-war-while-he-was-tingling-over-it/
That episode alone is more than enough to cancel out several careers worth of opposition to the war, but not only didnt it stop there, it also didnt start there. Before the Iraq invasion, before the vote on the Iraq resolution, Matthews was already signaling how he would deal with the real critics of the war. In an interview with Phil Donahue, Matthews slammed his then-MSNBC host for making fun of those who supported the invasion, and chalked that support up to a patriotic impulse:
Donahue was fired for being too critical of the war, while Matthews went on to succeed as a cheerleader for Bushs costume party, and for the Iraqi election that put Nouri al Maliki in power, which Matthews thought might land Dubya on Mount Rushmore:
oasis
(51,483 posts)..... .....
Celerity
(46,154 posts)Celerity
(46,154 posts)he morphed into a real piece of shit
Patrick Hayward Caddell (May 19, 1950 February 16, 2019)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Caddell
snip
In 1988, Caddell left Democratic consulting firm Caddell, Doak and Shrum after what The Washington Post described as an "acrimonious lawsuit". Republicans would often cite Caddell's tirades against the Democratic Party when they spoke on the floor of the House and the Senate.
Caddell's analysis on polls and campaign issues often put him at odds with the leadership of the Democratic Party. He was criticized by Media Matters for America and Salon columnist Steve Kornacki for predicting negative consequences for the Democratic Party. He called environmentalism "a conspiracy 'to basically deconstruct capitalism.'"
Caddell was a regular guest on Fox News, and at the time of his death was listed as an official "Fox News Contributor". This earned him the label of a "Fox News Democrat" by critics such as liberal online opinion magazine Salon. He also frequently appeared on the conservative Web site Ricochet.com, discussing politics.
According to online magazine Slate, Caddell was involved in identifying people willing to participate in the 2012 anti-Obama documentary The Hope and the Change, produced by Steve Bannon and Citizens United.
In the 2016 election cycle, Caddell exerted considerable influence in his capacity as advisor to Republican contributor Robert Mercer, who was a major fundraiser for the successful candidacy of Donald Trump.
oasis
(51,483 posts)I wrote him off as just another version of Dick Morris (minus the toe-sucking).
Celerity
(46,154 posts)that was 2 months (his resignation from the Clinton campaign) after I was born
oasis
(51,483 posts)a full time character assassin of both Clintons.
Voltaire2
(14,608 posts)doc03
(36,475 posts)the codpiece-loving, slobbering act was just too much for me
katmondoo
(6,490 posts)grandpamike1
(197 posts)For years, but finally got tired of his talking over guests, and ever to the point that, he would answer his questions as well. He was past his Use By date.
Evolve Dammit
(18,292 posts)StevieM
(10,532 posts)Iggo
(48,193 posts)UTUSN
(72,177 posts)As a DUer said years ago: "WHEN he's on our side there's nobody better."
lamp_shade
(15,070 posts)librechik
(30,783 posts)speak truth to power? not a lot of that, frankly. He's a star fucker supreme in the political arena.
Good riddance