Cuddles With Chris Matthews

[Bonnie]

Don't call it 'Hardball'
Brent Bozell


April 27, 2005

Chris Matthews really needs to retire the name "Hardball" for his talk show on MSNBC. When it comes to liberal or radical guests, he ought to rename the show "Cuddles with Chris."

When did this toothless trend become too obvious to ignore? It could have been with John Kerry about a year ago, when Matthews asked him "hardballs" like whether the Bush campaign was hoisting themselves "on their own petard by bringing up the issue of your service," and whether it was possible the Republicans were questioning Kerry's service because they realize "they can't beat you on the jobs issue, they can't beat you on foreign policy, so they're gonna drop this nonsensical stuff [on you]?"

Maybe the saddest recent example was the incredibly kissy-kissy Matthews interview with Jane Fonda on April 15. As part of a strategy to sell copies of her new memoirs, Fonda has suggested she is sorry for sitting behind a communist anti-aircraft gun pointed at American pilots in North Vietnam in 1972. But Fonda isn't really sorry. She still believes all the same hard-left baloney about communist good guys and American bad guys. Matthews did lob a few mildly tough questions, but they were more than outnumbered by obsequious comments about Fonda's correctness.

For example, when Matthews tried to ask if Ho Chi Minh was working in league with other communist governments, Fonda claimed Vietnam could have been a neutral country: "Ho Chi Minh begged the United States to become independent of France," and Matthews replied, "I remember it, in '45." That's funny: Matthews was born in 1945.

Fonda continued with her wacky history lesson. Ho Chi Minh "was essentially a nationalist," but "many people, I think rightly, have said he was really more like Tito, the Yugoslav president, Marshal Tito," the man generally seen in the 1970s and 1980s as a less doctrinaire communist tyrant. Matthews was eating it up: "I understand exactly. You know your stuff!"

Matthews pressed her on whether the Left actually shortened the war. When Fonda replied that yes, she and "tens of thousands of others" succeeded, Matthews fawned: "I think you're right! ...If that war was supported by the American people, we might have stayed in there a lot longer and still lost."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/printbb20050427.shtml

 

[manu1959]

the interview with zell miller was pricless....zel challenged him to a duel and wanted to kick his arse

 

[Bonnie]

the interview with zell miller was pricless....zel challenged him to a duel and wanted to kick his arse

LOL I saw that, it was great.

 

[BR-549]

Tonight!!! Chrisee only plays "Hardball" with Republicans with Dems it's "Puffball". I watch occasionally to see how the left thinks but Chrisee since about last February (And I e-mailed him with same observation) has dropped all pretense at objectivity and resorted to good ole Demo-leftie bias.. His ratings have got to be so low no one cares. NBC keeps MSNBC afloat just so it doesn't look bad tanking another useless liberal news "network".

 

[William Joyce]

Could be. Matthews was spokesman for Tip O'Neill back in the day, so he's a big-government kinda guy, but more in a GI Bill sort of way. Call him a Male Democrat, a vanishing but not extinct breed. I usually see him shooting straight, but I don't doubt he's got a soft spot for some libbies.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Don't call it 'Hardball'
Brent Bozell


April 27, 2005




http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/printbb20050427.shtml

Bozell hit the nail on the head with this one. I used to be a semi-regular viewer of "Hardball", as regular as someone with my hours can be. It was obvious that Matthews was to the left in his own views, but I found him to be pretty fair and, best of all, he didn't back off on tough questions for people on the left. I remember him giving a decent grilling to John Edwards early on in the presidential campaign.

I was actually looking forward to his interview with John Kerry, and I even taped it to make sure I wouldn't miss it. I couldn't wait to see Kerry's reaction when Matthews refused to back down on something. Boy, was I disappointed. Matthews sat across from him with a gleam in his eye like he'd found a long lost love. He did everything short of kneeling down and shining John Kerry's shoes, and his idea of not backing down that night was making sure Kerry got his version of a story across. Since then, I turned "Softball" off and only went back to see Zell Miller tear him a new butthole.