Tuesday, January 19, 2010

'Hardball' & Dumbed-Down US Politics

By Robert Parry
January 19, 2010

This past week, grappling with the twin top stories of Haiti’s earthquake tragedy and the Massachusetts Senate race, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews personified the strange mix of puffed-up self-importance and total lack of self-awareness that has come to define America’s media punditocracy.

Read on.
Posted by at

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris "Tweety-bird" Matthews is a fraud. He's surrounded by actual progressives on MSNBC's evening line-up. He says he voted for Bush in 2000. That says all I need to know about him. He worships the ground Tom Delay walks on-disgusting. He gave Ann Coulter an hour to sneer at the camera. I stopped watching him long ago. What a waste of time.

Tue Jan 19, 01:06:00 PM 2010
-a.f. said...

Your characterization of Coakley is pretty off base, particularly as an "effective prosecutor." She showed herself to be a political hack in her prosecutorial duties, pursuing cases when she knew those she was charging were innocent. See: http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/17/straining-to-defend-martha-coa

Now you could still make the case that she's better than Brown, but glossing over her troubling past is inexcusable.

Tue Jan 19, 01:19:00 PM 2010
Morton Kurzweil said...

It is not hypocrisy when morality is the natural expression of weak minds in positions of authority.
Such fools are convinced that power confirms their beliefs and that authority confirms moral judgments.
Socrates spoke of that "voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician".
One thousand years earlier it was written in Genesis, Chapter II, 17: "But of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die". And they do. When someone is convinced that he has the knowledge of good and evil he believes he has the authority to decide on the morality of others and to administer right and wrong.
We know this and we remain willing to be led by the dead.

Tue Jan 19, 01:21:00 PM 2010
David said...

Re: Massachusetts

Better Republicans for real than Democrats in name only,

Democrats who brought us NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act, Repeal of Glass Steagal, Bailouts for irresponsible bankers, Continued wars for empire, Non-health care reform and refusal to allow Single Payer to even be discussed, etc etc etc.

Tue Jan 19, 01:28:00 PM 2010
John L.Opperman said...

Snickering, giggling, spitting, drooling Mathews comes across as a screw-loose, childish adolesent, broadly-unconcernedly ignorant without any compassion for humanity other than the well to do celebs of a variety of stripes.
Generally flakey and foolish, insulated from reality given million$ to play silly.

Tue Jan 19, 02:20:00 PM 2010
Unknown said...

The description of Coakley brings to mind a darker motivation for the powerbrokers' actions against her -- somewhat similar to Eliot Spitzer's situation. Having her in a position such as senator would give her the opportunity to speak truth to power, investigate some big corporation individuals, and shine a lot of light in some very dark places. It would be nice to see both of Spitzer and Coakley appointed to czar and czarina positions where they could uncover corruption and bring some pretty bad guys to justice.

Wed Jan 20, 03:07:00 AM 2010
The Skeptical Cynic said...

Matthews has never been more the a dippy dilettante with delusions of adequacy. The depth of his knowledge of any subject about which he yaps at like a spoiled Chihuahua, if water, would be insufficient to drown a pismire. As dim, dumb and delusional are O’Reilly, Hannity and Beck, in any battle of wits, wisdom, or real worldliness, the best for which Matthews could hope would be a scoreless tie.



The Skeptical Cynic hath spake!



It is truly written in the sands of time…

One must never spit in a man's face....

Unless, of course, his moustache is on fire!

Thu Jan 21, 04:46:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

"...blissfully clueless about his own role as a purveyor of political trivia..."

It seems as though the line between trivia and propaganda has been blurred here and we cannot often be sure which is which. While I'm willing to grant that Matthews is not willingly and consciously spewing propaganda, he and for that matter Obama live within this stew of propaganda that the media has created for us.

All of us have difficulty distinguishing the two. It seems to me that the real difference between progressives and other people is that progressives are at least trying to make that distinction for themselves. The middle has given up. The right either never really cared about the difference or were active in blurring the difference for others.

Fri Jan 22, 07:51:00 AM 2010

Post a Comment