Hacktacular! ...It's Tweety's Imus moment! ...His stunning performance as a bag of hammers was brilliantly clueless!
UPDATED BELOW
The reviews poured in. A 2007 recipient from our top 10, Chris Matthews wins an encore nomination with his premier appearance this week in a psycho-drama role. A review of his NH primary commentary garnered * * * * stars, the most the reality-based academy can bestow.
How a tee-vee pundit can proudly crown himself with the allure of sexism as if he had bought his piffle-whacked tiara at Tiffany's speaks ill of NBC's brainless hubris in keeping Tweety on its roster. Loathing Hillary doesn't excuse his lengthy misogynistic history shown here and beyond Clinton here. A sample of clips:
Clinton gave a "barn-burner speech, which is harder to give for a woman; it can grate on some men when they listen to it -- fingernails on a blackboard." [Nov. 6, 2006]Someone, please, make him stop! Compiling a contact list of Hardball's advertisers to deluge with complaints might do the trick. Sponsoring Tweety's cage-liner act is like stamping the Imus Seal of Bigotry on an advertiser's brand. Perhaps the newly-inspired blog, whose title and efforts we whole-heartedly applaud, can alert us to sources. A letter-writing enterprise would surely grab a network ad veep's attention and TPTB.
After questioning Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) position on entitlement reforms, he then asked Dodd, "Do you find it difficult to debate a woman?" Dodd, not surprisingly, said, "[N]ot at all." [Sept. 26, 2007]
...Matthews asked Financial Times U.S. managing editor Chrystia Freeland: "[A]ren't you appalled at the willingness of these people to become castratos in the eunuch chorus here or whatever they are?" [Dec. 17, 2007]
But would Tweety get the message? What a laughable proposition! A Freudian two-by-four smacked across his Olympic-sized ego would dislodge not one iota of self-awareness or ignite a solitary synapse to fire up any idea associated with an honest apology. A mea culpa that sticks? Don't make us snort! He demonstrated his incapacity for mea culpa within hours after Tom Brokaw tweaked his beak and the Village elders for pissing on the HRC campaign when voters proved them hacktacularly wrong. Courtesy TPM, relive Tweety's headliner flop in living color....
Bravo! What sensational wingnuttery! Other critics raved this week with equally damning praise -- He's a prince among the Media Misogynists! You can't deny he's assholish, a legend in his own "warped mind." Heeeeeee's back "speaking for voters again," oblivious to what a "ding-dong" he is along with "other angry male pundits," who motivated women to the polls in Hillary's defense.
[Keep reading ... more stunning videos and reviews after the jump]
Via Atrios, Air America's Rachel Maddox informed Matthews that his political theatrics in the Hillary Bash-a-thon helped tilt the election....
And just when you prayed that the curtain would drop on Tweety's unseemly burlesque, add another star to the Media Walk of Shame for his lead in the remake of The Bradley Effect. Digby's critique:
That's a very hot accusation in a Democratic primary to suggest that the women who voted for Hillary didn't do it as a matter of affinity but rather did it because they couldn't vote for an African American and had earlier lied to pollsters about it. (That's what the Bradley Effect is.) ...a provocative accusation about a specific group of voters in the Democratic coalition.Bob Somerby (with emphasis):
Matthews ran as fast as he could to accuse large numbers of New Hampshire Dems of lying on account of race. As far as we know, there’s no evidence that anything like that occurred; we’d have to say that, in our view, Matthews’ conjecture makes little real sense. But Matthews is a deeply irresponsible man—a slightly cleaned-up Joseph McCarthy. That’s why Jack Welch so loved this tool’s soul....Tweety must blame someone, something to deflect the notion that prima donnas like him can't divine an election no more than howlers auditioning for Scream MMVIII. Mark Halperin of Time conceded mainstream press bias during Charlie Rose's coverage of the primary. We don't know what got into him (someone may say he's a Clinton plant), but here's the video....
How dare he! Don't expect Halperin's "we're not fair" confession to get much traction especially with the likes of Matthews.
Will Tweety continue to hog the spotlight cluelessly out of touch with an audience shrinking to the size of his credibility? Perhaps, in a world where the Nyuk Nyuk Times rewards the "wrongest wingnut of all," Bill Kristol, with a headline gig, Matthews could make a comeback even if he repeatedly bombs.
Dragging Tweety off center stage would thrill critics, but his dramatic reprisals may serve to disrupt Big Media's influence on an electorate determined to think for themselves. Some might fault how voters react, but waving their middle fingers at the media establishment earns our applause.
Give it up for Tweety's well-deserved award.
Check next Saturday when we award another Wurlitzer Prize for Wingnuttery™. Leave your nominations for next week's winner in comments.
UPDATE: Also check Jamison Foser's excellent column, "MSNBC's Chris Matthews problem," which includes an insightful snippet from Christy Hardin Smith of FireDogLake.
